The Barons of the Exchequer.
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debts to the king. It was a sort of garnishee the exchequer table at the Palace of West minster, received the royal revenue, audited proceeding in favor of the king, and this privi the sheriffs' accounts, and administered lege was ultimately extended to all the lieges, incidental justice. Mark, it was still in the on the extravagant fiction that they were the time of the first Henry, " the King's Court," king's debtors in posse, if not in esse. But but " at Exchequer" — that was the phrase we must not quarrel with a fiction which gave — Curia Regis ad Seaeearium. This word us that grand old court which, unchanged "exchequer" {Seaeearium) was derived from for nearly six hundred years, dealt out an "the chequered cloth figured with squares even-handed justice to all manner of men like a chessboard which was wont to be without fear or favor, and which, it should laid on the table in the court, and which not be forgotten, exhibited the first ideal fu seems to have assisted our ancestors "in the sion of law and equity. The flowing tide of counting of money " according to the way legal reform which marked the commence which was used in those times. This and ment of this century first swept away in 1841 other details of this primitive and picturesque its equitable jurisdiction, and then the judi court, the constitution of the Exchequer cature acts merged its illustrious traditions Board, its course of proceeding, its treatment and its unique honors in the dead level of of the king's debtors, its writs, its rolls, its the one-judge system. But what a record chessboard and counters, its tallies, its scale, that old Court of Exchequer holds or held! what a splendid galaxy of legal genius has its melting-pot — all these will be found ex pounded in the " Dialogues de Scaccarie," adorned its bench! the good and great Sir of Richard Fitzneale, sometime a master of Matthew Hale — elarum et venerabile nothe board, and versed in all its mysteries. men; Comyns, to whom we owe that work Need we wonder that, what between the king, of monumental industry and research, "Co vexed with eternal want of pence, the dis myns' Digest "; the erudite Gilbert, famous no less for the variety and depth of learning in tresses of his debtors, and an unfailing sup ply of local disputes, the board of exchequer his legal t1eatises than for his mathematical barons came soon to have a "multiplicity of and literary accomplishments; the humane business "; yet it was continually drawing and discriminating Sir Archibald Macdonmore and more matter within the sphere of ald; Sir James Eyre, memorable for the fine its jurisdiction, and it is " pretty to observe," impartiality with which he presided at the as Mr. Pepys would say, how the board am j famous trial of Home Tooke; Lord Abinger, the greatest verdict-winner of his age; the plified its jurisdiction until it came to be con courteous and judicial-minded Rolfe, after verted into a Court of Common Law of co ordinate jurisdiction with the King's Bench wards Lord Cranworth; Parke, the great and the Common Pleas, taking cognizance black-letter lawyer of this century; Sir Fred of all but real actions, and invested with an erick Pollock; the founder of the " Mucian equitable as well as criminal jurisdiction. It gens " of England; the versatile Kelly; the was in this wise. The barons allowed all the genial and acute Bramwell; these are names king's debtors, and farmers, and all account- which will keep the memory of the Court tants of the Exchequer to sue all manner of of Exchequer green so long as English law persons intheir court, on the plea that by rea yers value what is greatest and best in their son of the wrong done to the plaintiff by the legal traditions. — Irish Law Times and So defendant, he was unable to discharge his lieitors' Journal.
