Page:The Public Records and The Constitution.djvu/41

  permanent or perpetually renewable Commissions are those of Customs and of Inland Revenue, the growth of which is briefly shown upon the table. Upon these the Treasury largely depends for its supplies.

The Commissioners of the Treasury itself act under a Commission which may be regarded as temporary, as renewable, or as permanent. It is temporary in relation to the particular individuals commissioned, it is renewable to other individuals upon a change of Ministry, and it is permanent in the sense that it is now the established form of Treasury Administration.

The Treasury, before acquiring its present organization, has, however, passed through strange vicissitudes. In the reign of the Conqueror, and in the early part of the reign of Henry I, the Treasury was the place of deposit of Domesday Book, then known as the Winchester Book because the Treasury was at Winchester. The King's Court, the Curia Regis, sat in it, and heard causes between subject and subject, and not until about the year 1118 do we find any mention of the Exchequer. Soon after, we find the King's Court sitting, not in the Treasury, but at the Exchequer, and there exercising the jurisdiction afterwards known as that of the Court of Common Pleas, and another jurisdiction afterwards known as that of the Court of Exchequer. By degrees the Exchequer overshadowed the Treasury, and the Exchequer jurisdiction was exercised by the Treasurer and Barons of the Exchequer. All the records relating to fiscal matters, including Domesday Book itself, and including all legal proceedings relating to the royal revenue, came to be known as Exchequer Records.

There was a Lord High Treasurer, who was superior to the Barons of the Exchequer, but there was no independent Treasury Department, in the modern sense of the term, before the middle of the sixteenth century,