If any fines or amerciaments be extracted out of any of the said courts upon any man, or any arrerages of accounts of such things as is of customs, taxes, and subsidies, or other such like occasions, the same the sheriff of the shire doth gather, and is answerable therefore in the Exchequer: as for other ordinary rents of patrimonial lands, and most commonly of taxes, customs, and subsidies, there be particular receivers and collectors, which do answer it into the Exchequer. This court of the Exchequer hath of old time, and, as I think, since the Conquest, been kept at Westminster, notwithstanding sometimes removed thence by commandment of the king, and after restored again, as, namely, in the year 1209, King John commanded the Exchequer to be removed from Westminster to Northampton, etc.
On the left hand above the stair is the Duchy chamber, wherein is kept the court for the duchy of Lancaster by a chancellor of that duchy, and other officers under him. Then is there in another chamber the office of the receipts of the queen’s revenues for the crown: then is there also the Star chamber, where in the term time, every week once at the least, which is commonly on Fridays and Wednesdays, and on the next day after the term endeth, the lord chancellor, and the lords, and other of the privy council, and the chief justices of England, from nine of the clock till it be eleven, do sit.
This place is called the Star chamber, because the roof thereof is decked with the likeness of stars gilt: there be plaints heard of riots, routs, and other misdemeanors; which if they be found by the king’s council, the party offender shall be censured by these persons, which speak one after another, and he shall be both fined and commanded to prison.
Then at the upper end of the great hall, by the King’s Bench, is a going up to a great chamber, called the White hall, wherein is now kept the court of Wards and Liveries, and adjoining thereunto is the Court of Requests. Then is St. Stephen’s chapel, of old time founded by King Stephen. King John, in the 7th of his reign, granted to Baldwinus de London, clerk of his Exchequer, the chapelship of St. Stephen’s at Westminster, etc. This chapel was again since, of a far more curious workmanship, new built by King Edward III. in the year 1347, for thirty-eight persons in that church to serve God; to wit, a dean, twelve secular canons, thirteen vicars, four clerks, five choristers, two servitors, to wit, a verger and a keeper of the chapel. He built for those from the house of Receipt, along nigh to the Thames, within the same palace, there to inhabit; and since that there was also built for them, betwixt the clock-house and the wool staple, called the Wey house. He also built to the use of this chapel (though out of the palace court), some distance west, in the little sanctuary, a strong clochard of stone and timber, covered with lead, and placed therein three great bells, since usually rung at coronations, triumphs, funeral of princes, and their obits. Of those bells men fabuled that their ringing soured all the drink in the town: more, that about the biggest bell was written,—
“King Edward made me,
Thirtie thousand and three;
Take me downe and wey me,
And more shall ye find me.”
But these bells being taken down indeed, were found all three not to weigh twenty thousand. True it is, that in the city of Rouen, in Normandie, there is one great bell, that hath such inscription as followeth:—
“Je suis George de Ambois,
Qui trente cinq mil a pois,
Mes lui qui me pesera,
Trente six mil me trouera.
“I am George of Ambois,
Thirty-five thousand in pois;
But he that shall weigh me,
Thirty-six thousand shall find me.”
The said King Edward endowed this chapel with lands to the yearly value of five hundred pounds. Doctor John Chambers, the king’s physician, the last dean of this college, built thereunto a cloister of curious workmanship, to the charges of eleven thousand marks. This chapel, or college, at the suppression, was valued to dispend in lands by the year one thousand and eighty-five pounds ten shillings and five pence, and was surrendered to Edward VI.; since the which time the same chapel hath served as a parliament house.