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 64 VERSES ON THE EXCHEQUER January writing in 1572 1 and Vernon in 1642 2 as a principle of the exchequer. The text of the poem suggests that this was well established by the beginning of the fifteenth century. The auditor, who was ' worse than a demon ' (1. 14) unless propitiated with gifts, compiled the account from the particulars. The next stage is the declaration of the account before the baron (1. 28), whose good offices are to be secured with a bribe. The two remembrancers are then referred to by name as having to be bribed (1. 37). Then, apparently irrelevantly, the chancellor of the exchequer is introduced as yet another officer eager for gifts (1. 40). After entry with the two remembrancers the foreign account is entered on the .pipe roll. 3 Accordingly, the clerk of the pipe must be approached with a gift. 4 Next to the clerk of the pipe sits the writer of the counter-roll — the controller of the pipe — also a lover of gifts (1. 47). The clerk of the pleas is then introduced (1. 49), possibly much as the chancellor had been, to show that all officers of the court with whom accountants might have to do must be propitiated with money. Then various clerks of the exchequer are referred to as eager for gifts and unwilling to do anything without money (11. 51-4). Lines 55-8 complain that all receivers of crown revenue making payments into the exchequer, the collectors of customs and subsidies, keepers of liberties and sheriffs, were all subject to this kind of extortion. The writer then seems to allude (11. 59-66) to an abuse common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the sheriff, owing to the connivance or carelessness of the foreign opposer, nichilled sums which ought to have been totted. The allusion to Henry Preston (1. 61) — presumably one person is meant, and probably the Henricus again referred to in ii, line 19 — suggests that he was foreign opposer, but this is not borne out in the patent rolls. 5 The verses then seem to continue the description of 1 Thomas Fanshawe (1533-1601) wrote The Practise of the Exchequer Court in 1572 for Burghley (original manuscript in possession of Basil Fanshawe of Bretton). The printed version (1651) post-dates the book by stating that it was written for Lord Buckhurst. 2 Christopher Vernon, Considerations for regulating the Exchequer. 8 Or on the roll of Foreign Accounts, Record Office Lists and Indexes. 4 The description in the text of the passing of a foreign account corresponds closely with various descriptions of the ancient course of the exchequer : ' the like course had been alwayes used and observed concerning the Accompts of Collectors, Customers, Receivers of Bishops Temporalities and all other Accomptants whatsoever, within the survey of the Exchequer. For though they be declared by the Auditors before the Treasurer, Chancellour and Barons, or all or some of them ; and entred in the offices of both the Remembrancers, yet they are not thereby fully determined before they come to the Pipe where they are to remain upon Record for ever. . . and where their Tallies being first examined and joined with their Foyles are to bee allowed and the Debts and Supers therin depending (if any such bee) entred in the said great Roll. . . ' : Vernon, op. cit., p. 49. 5 A Henry de Preston in 1387 was one of two persons appointed to hold an exchequer inquisition for Lancaster, Cumberland, and Westmorland ; to survey the king's