The result of his confusion is that his account of the origins (in England) of knight service is not only gravely erroneous, but curiously topsy-turvy. This is scarcely wonderful when we find on page 365 that he is hopelessly confused about knights and serjeants, not having grasped the elementary distinction between tenure by serjeanty and tenure by knight service. From what I have seen of the author’s account of the battle of Bannockburn, his errors, I imagine, are by no means restricted to the subjects I have here discussed. A curious combination of confidence and unwillingness to admit his mistakes, with a haste or confusion of thought that leads him into grievous error, is responsible, it would seem, for those misconceptions which render untrustworthy, as it stands, his ‘History of the Art of War.’
IV
The Origin of the Exchequer
Historians have rivalled one another in their witness to the extraordinary interest and importance of the twelfth-century Exchequer. “The whole framework of society,” writes the Bishop of Oxford, “may be said to have passed annually under its review.... The regular action of the central power of the kingdom becomes known to us first in the proceedings of the Exchequer.” Gneist insists on “its paramount importance” while “finance is the centre of all government”; and in her brilliant monograph on Henry the Second, Mrs. Green asserts “that the study of the Exchequer is in effect the key to English history at this time.... It was the fount of English law and English freedom.” One can, therefore, understand Mr. Hall’s enthusiasm for “the most characteristic of all our national institutions ... the stock from which the several branches of the administration originally sprang.” Nor does this study appeal to us only on account of its importance. A glamour, picturesque, sentimental it may be, and yet dazzling in its splendour, surrounds an institution possessing so immemorial an antiquity that “Barons of the Exchequer” meet us alike in the days of our Norman kings and in those of Queen Victoria. Its “tellers,” at least coeval with the Conquest, were only finally abolished some sixty years ago, while the Chancellor of the Exchequer is believed to represent that “clericus cancellarii” whose seat at the Exchequer of the second Henry was close to that of the official ancestor of the present secretary to the Treasury. Yet, older than these, older even than the very name of the Exchequer, was its wondrous system of wooden tallies, that hieroglyphic method of account which carries us back to a distant past, but which, Sir John Lubbock has observed, was “actually in use at the Exchequer until the year 1824.” Of all survivals of an archaic age this was, probably, the most marvellous; it is not easy to realize that even in the present century English officials were keeping their accounts with pieces of wood which “had attained the dimensions, and presented somewhat the appearance, of one of the wooden swords of the South Sea Islanders.” It was an almost tragic feature in the passing of “the old order” that when these antique relics were finally committed to the flames, there perished, in the conflagration said to have been thus caused, that Palace of Parliament which, like themselves, had lingered on to witness the birth of the era of Reform.
But what, it may be asked, was the Exchequer, and why was it so named? The earliest answer, it would seem, is that of William Fitz Stephen, who, in his biography of Becket, tells us that, in 1164, John the Marshal was in London, officially engaged “at the quadrangular table, which, from its counters (calculis) of two colours, is commonly called the Exchequer (scaccarium), but which is rather the king’s table for white money (nummis albicoloribus), where also are held the king’s pleas of the Crown.”[135] The passage is not particularly clear, but I quote it because it is not, I believe, mentioned by Mr. Hall,[136] and because William Fitz Stephen knew his London well. The questions I have asked above are those which avowedly are answered in the first chapter of the famous ‘Dialogus de Scaccario’ (circ. 1178). I need not, however, repeat in detail the explanations there given, for they should be familiar from the works of Dr. Stubbs and of every writer on the subject. Suffice it to say that while, in shape, the ‘Exchequer’, with its ledge, as Mr. Hall observes, was not unlike a billiard table, “it derived its name from the chequered cloth” which, says Dr. Stubbs, covered it, and which gave it a resemblance to a chess board (scaccarium). Antiquaries have questioned this, as they will question everything; but the fact remains that the symbol of the Exchequer, of which types have been depicted by Mr. Hall, is that which swings and creaks before the wayside ‘chequers,’ which once, in azure and gold, blazed upon the hill of Lewes, and which still is proudly quartered by the Earl Marshal of England.
In the present paper I propose to consider the origin and development of the institution, and to examine critically some of the statements in the famous ‘Dialogus de Scaccario,’ of which the authority has hitherto been accepted almost without question.
It is alleged that a cruel hoax was perpetrated on the Royal Society by that ‘merry monarch’ Charles II., who called on its members to account for a phenomenon which existed only in his own imagination. Antiquaries and historians have, with similar success, been hoaxed by Richard the son of Nigel, who stated as a fact in his ‘Dialogue on the Exchequer,’ that there is no mention of a ‘blanch’ ferm to be found in Domesday Book. Richard proceeded to infer from this that those who spoke of ‘blanch’ ferm existing before the Conquest must be mistaken.[137]
Dr. Stubbs actually accepts the statement that “the blanch-ferm is not mentioned in Domesday,” but declares that Stapleton, in his well-known argument,[138] has clearly shown it to have had “its origin in a state of things that did not exist in Normandy, and was ‘consequent upon the monetary system of the Anglo-Saxons.’ The argument,” he writes, “is very technical, but quite conclusive.” Sir James Ramsay also, though writing as a specialist on finance, contents himself with citing Stapleton, through Stubbs, and with adding a reference to “white silver” in the Laws of Ælfred,[139] and ignores the evidence in Domesday Book.
Now the index to the Government edition of Domesday is a very imperfect production, but we need travel no farther than its pages to discover that there is no difficulty to solve; for the “alba firma” is duly entered under an Isle of Wight manor (i. 39 b). Moreover, we read on the same folio of “lx solidos albos” and “xii libras blancas” in a way that suggests the identity of the two descriptions. But, further, we find, scattered over Domesday, ‘Libræ albæ,’ ‘blancæ,’ and ‘candidæ,’ together with ‘libræ de albis denariis’ or ‘de candidis denariis,’ and ‘libræ alborum nummorum’ or ‘candidorum nummorum.’ The ‘blanch’ system, therefore, was already quite familiar. This, however, is not all. On the folio mentioned above (i. 39 b) we read of another manor: “T. R. E. xxv lib. ad pensum et arsuram.” This can only refer to that payment in weighed and assayed money, the method of which is described in the ‘Dialogue’ under ‘Quid ad militem argentarium’ and ‘Quid ad fusorem’ (I. vi.). All this elaborate system, therefore, must have been already in operation before the Conquest.
But the ‘Dialogue’ asserts in its next and very remarkable chapter—“A quibus vel ad quid instituta fuerit argenti examinatio”—that this system was first introduced by the famous Roger, bishop of Salisbury, the writer’s great-uncle, after he had sat at the Exchequer for some years, and had discovered the need of introducing it.[140] Between this statement and the evidence of Domesday the contradiction is so absolute that a grave question at once arises as to the value of the writer’s assertions on the early Norman period. Like the men of his time, he revelled in texts, and loved to drag them in on every possible occasion. One is, therefore, only following his example in suggesting that his guiding principle was, “I magnify my office.” The greatness and the privileges of a seat at the Exchequer were ever present in his mind. But to this he added another principle, for which insufficient allowance, perhaps, has hitherto been made. And this was, ‘I magnify my house.’ Nor can one blame the worthy treasurer for dwelling on his family’s achievements and exalting his father and his great-uncle as the true pillars of the Exchequer. He was perfectly justified in doing this; but historians should have been on their guard when he claims for Bishop Roger the introduction of a system which Domesday Book shows us as already in general operation.[141]
Enlightened by this discovery, we can more hardily approach a statement by the writer in the same chapter, which has been very widely repeated. One need only mention its acceptance by such specialists as Stapleton, in his work on the Norman Exchequer, and Mr. Hubert Hall, who, in his work on the ‘Antiquities and Curiosities of the Exchequer,’ refers to it four times.[142] He first tells us that