appear to have been the special difficulty of the Treasurer's position which led to the system of audit by means of a 'Declared Account', as a substitute at once for the cumbrous method of the earlier Exchequer, and the more recent practice of personal verification by the sovereign. When Sir Henry Wyatt left office he was directed to declare his account before a General Surveyor of the King's Lands, and this method was adopted when the Surveyors became a statutory court in 1541 and ultimately passed after the dissolution of the special courts into ordinary Exchequer practice.[1]
Sir William Cavendish, who was ill when the Privy Council asked for details of his account on 9 October, died on 25 October 1557. An account for 1 April to 31 December 1557 is in the name of Edmund Felton, perhaps only an interim administrator.[2] The Treasurership of the Chamber, together with the Mastership of the Posts, was granted by patent on 29 October 1558 to Sir John Mason, with a fee of £240 and 1s. a day.[3] Mason was continued in office by Elizabeth, and on 23 December 1558 the Lord Chamberlain, the Comptroller of the Household, the Secretary, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were appointed as a committee of the Privy Council 'to survey the office of the Treasurer of the Chamber and to assigne order of paymente'.[4] As a result, considerable changes seem to have been made, which reversed the policy of the last half-century and much reduced the Treasurer's responsibilities. On the one hand, the funds assigned to the Cofferer of the Household, the Surveyor of Works, the Master of Posts, and the Ambassadors no longer passed through his account; on the other, a separate account was established for the more personal expenditure of the Queen, which was put into the charge of a Groom of the Privy Chamber, acting as keeper of the Privy Purse. Both accounts seem to have become subject to audit and declaration at the Exchequer; but while that of the Treasurer of the Chamber was declared annually, the only extant Privy Purse account of the reign is one for the ten years 1559-69 declared after the death of the first keeper, John Tamworth.[5] This was*
- ↑ A fuller account of the Tudor Chamber finance is given by Newton, 360; cf. M. D. George, The Origin of the Declared Account (E. H. R. xxxi. 41).
- ↑ Felton was cofferer in 1553 (Archaeologia, xii. 372).
- ↑ S. P. D. Mary, xiv. The fee of £240 represents the old fee of £100 attached to the Treasurership, together with allowances of £100 for board wages, £20 for clerks, £10 for boat-hire, and £10 for office necessaries, which Cavendish's accounts show that he enjoyed. The 1s. a day was presumably the fee for the Posts.
- ↑ Dasent, vii. 15, 27; S. P. D. Eliz. Addl. ix. 3.
- ↑ Nicholas, Eliz. i. 264, printed the accounts of Edmund Downing as
