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 112 REVIEWS OF BOOKS January operations of Droxford's time. If it had been the intention of the king to substitute the wardrobe for the exchequer as the permanent finance department, we should have expected him to put his ablest minister at the head of the wardrobe. This he did not do. In the critical years of the reign he kept Walter Langton, his chief adviser, at the exchequer. Droxford, the head of the wardrobe, was apparently a man of quite inferior calibre who, except as a routine financier, counted for nothing in the administration. It is just possible that Langton was given the treasureship because the formal duties of that office were expected to be light, and to leave him free for more important work. But there was one great responsibility which still rested on the exchequer, and which Edward never attempted to take away. This was the keeping of the accounts of receipts, and the holding to account of the agents through whom the revenue was collected. Although, towards the end of the reign, a large part of the revenue was paid directly to the wardrobe by the sheriffs and other collectors, these payments were always made in virtue of authoriza- tions from the exchequer. Formally also the wardrobe was still bound to present its accounts of receipts and expenses for audit at the exchequer. The obligation was evaded in Droxford's time, by perpetual postponements of the date for presentation ; his accounts were audited by slow degrees in the course of the next reign. But Mr. Tout is doubtless right in attribut- ing the break-down of exchequer control to 'the hopeless disorder and confusion of the finances of a king who was habitually overspending his income and postponing the day of settlement ' (Chapters, ii. 126). We pass over the period of conflict between Edward II and the Ordainers, because the attitude of the latter towards the household is clearly explained in Mr. Tout's earlier work. It is, however, worth while to examine the policy pursued by the Despensers and their allies in the years 1322-6. We find at least three important attacks on the bureaucracy of the household in this period. (1) The exchequer was thoroughly reformed by Walter de Stapeldon (1322-5), and its control over the wardrobe was tightened in 1324 by the ordinance of Westminster. This ordinance revived the rule of the Ordainers that all issues of the land should be paid into the exchequer. It brought under the direct control of the exchequer the great spending departments of the household which had hitherto accounted to the wardrobe. It insisted on the prompt presentation to the exchequer of all wardrobe accounts which were still in arrears, and named a fixed date (14 October) on which the accounts of future years were to be presented. (2) Kobert Baldock, who was chancellor between 1323 and 1326, succeeded, while he remained in office, in subordinating the privy seal to the chancery, by the simple expedient of placing it in the hands of a chancery clerk. Further he completed the severance of the chancery from the household by making the clerk of the hanaper accountable to the exchequer instead of to the wardrobe. (3) The forfeited estates of rebels, which from the beginning of 1321 to the middle of 1322 were being systematically placed under the control of the resuscitated chamber, were handed over to the exchequer in July 1322. In the Place of Edward II (p. 152) Mr. Tout argues, from the evidence of these measures and of the ' establishments ' passed in the