In every administrative district of Normandy and England the king had an agent--in England the sheriff, in Normandy the _vicomte_ or _bailli_--to collect his revenues, which consisted chiefly of the income from lands and forests, the fees and fines in the royal courts, the proceeds of the various feudal incidents, and the various payments which there were from time to time levied under the name of Danegeld, scutage, aid, or gift. Twice a year, at Easter and Michaelmas, these agents were required to come to the treasury and render their accounts to the king’s officers. At Easter the sheriff was expected to pay in half of his receipts, receiving therefor down to 1826 a receipt in the form of a notched stick or tally, split down the middle so that there was exact agreement between the portion retained at the exchequer and the portion carried off by the sheriff to be produced when the accounts of the year were settled at Michaelmas. The great session of the exchequer at Michaelmas was a very important occasion and is described for us in detail in a most interesting contemporary treatise, the _Dialogue on the Exchequer_, written by Richard the King’s Treasurer, in 1178–79. There the sheriff met the great officials of the king’s household who were also the great officers of the Anglo-Norman state--the justiciar, chancellor, constable, treasurer, chamberlains, and marshal, reënforced by clerks, tally-cutters, calculators, and other assistants. The place and the institution took their names from a chequered table or chess-board--the Latin name _scaccarium_ means a chess-board--in size and shape not unlike a billiard table, covered with cloth which was ruled off into columns for pence, shillings, pounds, hundreds and thousands of pounds. On one side were set forth in this graphic manner the sums which the sheriff was required to pay, on the other he and his clerk tried to offset these with tallies, receipts, warrants, and counters representing actual cash. Played with skill and care on each side, for the stakes were high, this great match was likened to a game of chess between the sheriff and the king’s officers. Its results were recorded each year, district by district and item by item, on a great roll, called the pipe roll from the pipes, or skins of parchment sewed end to end, of which it was made up. For England we have an unbroken series of these rolls from the second year of Henry II, as well as an odd roll of Henry I, constituting a record of finance and government quite unique in contemporary Europe. The series was doubtless as complete for Normandy, but there survive from Henry’s reign only the roll of 1180 and fragments of that of 1184. For the other Plantagenet lands nothing remains.