Catalogue description OFFICE OF SECRETARIES OF STATE ACCOUNT BOOKS OF FEES PAYABLE FOR WARRANTS, TREASURY BILLS, ETC

Details of Subseries within SP 45
Reference: Subseries within SP 45
Title: OFFICE OF SECRETARIES OF STATE ACCOUNT BOOKS OF FEES PAYABLE FOR WARRANTS, TREASURY BILLS, ETC
Note: The practice of exacting fees of fixed amounts on certain types of business transacted by the Secretaries was already well established in the reign of Charles II: there was originally considerable competition for the more lucrative fees between the officials of the two Secretaries, but in 1699 an agreement was reached that the fees received in each office should be periodically brought to account and then divided equally between the two offices. By the eighteenth century, the fees were then distributed in each department between the Secretary, the two Under-Secretaries, the First or Chief Clerk and the two Office Keepers. Other than the Secretaryship, these positions were not official appointments: they were formally the personal servants of the Secretary, and thus the fees formed the major part of their income. Under-Secretaries were not given salaries until 1770: before then they had to rely on fees and the salaries fixed to the official positions of Secretary of the Latin Tongue, Writer of the Gazette, Clerk of the Signet and Keeper and Collector of the State Papers, offices which they monopolised as sinecures. Other fee books survive elsewhere, outside the Public Record Office: see J C Sainty, Officials of the Secretaries of State 1660-1782 (Office-Holders in Modern Britain, vol II: London, 1973), p 4.

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