Catalogue description Records of the Exchequer of Pleas

Originally, the financial and judicial aspects of the Exchequer were undifferentiated and lawsuits were pleaded there either because some issue had arisen in the course of the accounting procedure, or because it was convenient for the Crown or the litigant to take the opportunity of suing while the king's court was in session. Evidence of such cases pleaded in the Exchequer can be found as early as the reign of John and, more plentifully, in the early years of Henry III. At first, the judicial business of the Exchequer may well have been conducted by all or any of the officials present without specialisation, but there is some reason to believe that, even as early as the 1180s, the persons who were appointed barons of the Exchequer might be legal experts as well as financial ones, and that they might at times deliberate separately from the processes of audit.

By 1234 the 'barons of the Exchequer' were clearly not merely an ad hoc assembly of royal counsellors and officials but a definable group of personnel with specifically judicial and administrative roles. From the early fourteenth century these barons were recruited from amongst the senior Exchequer clerks and from the ranks of practitioners in the other common law courts, and although there is reference to some sort of 'chief baron' under Edward I, by 1312 this was clearly a specific posting analogous to that of a chief justice in King's Bench or Common Pleas. For a long time the barons, even though many were lawyers by training, were regarded as lesser judges than others; under Edward III only the Chief Baron was reckoned amongst the assize justices. The barons ranked not only after the other judges but after the serjeants at law, and they were not summoned to parliament. Not until 1579 was it accepted that a Baron of the Exchequer ranked equally with a puisne judge of the other common law courts.

The Clerk of the Pleas was appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but the duties were usually performed by a deputy (the Master of the Office of Pleas), supported by four sworn clerks, each having up to four underclerks or 'side clerks'; these clerks constituted a closed corporation with a monopoly (until 1832) of engagement as attorneys in actions before the court.

Although the functions of the Exchequer came to become more narrowly focused on the strictly financial aspects of royal administration, the jurisdiction of the Exchequer of Pleas tended to widen. Numerous attempts were made to enforce a narrower scope for the court; the barons themselves tried in 1268 to limit the number of days on which they would hear cases not strictly related to the revenue or to Exchequer officials, and two years later pleas of debt irrelevant to the Exchequer were ordered to be transferred to the Court of Common Pleas. Yet, around 1300, the doctrine of quominus began to develop, whereby an accountant, royal debtor, or Exchequer official or his dependants might sue or be sued in the Exchequer, on the grounds that he might otherwise be able so much the less (quominus) to discharge his revenue obligations to the Crown. The application of this doctrine became increasingly loose, to the extent that almost anyone came to be able to sue at common law in the Exchequer of Pleas; virtually any action with financial implications would be accepted as having potential revenue implications for the Crown. Against this trend, the Articuli super cartas (28 Edward I c4) required that no common pleas be heard in the Exchequer contrary to Magna Carta, and in 1323 the barons were forbidden to hear pleas until an accountant had actually appeared to account, unless the case was authorised by writ or specifically concerned Exchequer business.

These efforts proved fruitless in the face of persistent use by litigants (and the collusion of the barons of the Exchequer), and in 1381 (5 Richard II 1 c9) the obligation to obtain an original writ from Chancery before a defendant could plead or sue his discharge in the Exchequer was abolished, an exemption which remained unique amongst common law courts until the Process in Courts of Law Act 1832 c39. It is clear that the Exchequer of Pleas never seriously challenged the levels of business achieved by the other common law courts, and to that extent the primacy of revenue and Exchequer business was firmly established, but the breadth of potential jurisdiction survived. The Exchequer of Pleas took the bulk of business in tithe cases; although actions to enforce payment could be pursued in the ecclesiastical courts, cases between clergy and lay claimants were normally heard at common law.

Under the Statute Law Revision Act 1875 the Exchequer of Pleas became a division of the Supreme Court of Judicature, and finally lost its separate identity under an order in council of 16 December 1880, whereby it was merged with the Queen's Bench Division.