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Guide to the Public Records 4 GUIDE TO THE PUBLIC RECORDS: INTRODUCTORY divisions of Public Administration, after their differentiation into separate " Departments, found it necessary to have sections ofits ownexercising functions which strictly belonged to one of the others. Thus the Chancery, which in theory, and originally infact, issued all Royal Letters and Writs, without excep- tion, under a single Great Seal, found it necessary very early in the thirteenth century to allow the Exchequer a Great Seal ofits own ; and wehave seen that a Pleas section also developed in that body. The two great Courts of Justice acquired separate Seals for the issuing of their multitudinous Writs inthe —four- 'teenth century.' The Chancery not only has its own Financial Section the Hanaper —but in due course develops a modest Common Law machinery ofits own, with appropriate Records ; and an anything but modest Equitable juris- diction, which, beginning on simple lines in the later medieval period, ended with the monstrous machine that has bequeathed to us nearly a million and a quarter of Chancery Proceedings. Another phase of development, which followed naturally upon complete departmentalisation of Chancery, Exchequer' and Law' Courts, may be summed up in words generally used of the Common 'Pleas as they were affected by the provisions ofMagna Carfa :one by one they ceased to follow the King '. The Sovereign and his Court still,in medieval fashion, perambulated : the Public Departments could no longer do without a fixedlocation for their business, their Staff and their Records. To replace the element of personal control which the King was thus in danger of losing, and also to provide at the Court for necessary Sealing, Accounting and Judicial business which could not wait while Chancellor, Treasurer or Justiciar were fetched from distant Offices, there developed within the Royal Household new Sealing, Accounting and Judicial machinery controlled by appropriate Officers. The last named, the Court of the Verge, though from the time of'Edward' Iitcould and did try both Pleas of the Crown and CivilPleas within the verge of the Royal Court, never seriously challenged the supremacy of the more ancient Courts :itlived oninto the nineteenth century inthe form of thePalace Court but only for the recovery of small debts inLondon. On the other hand the new financial machinery of Wardrobe and Camera, though nominally subject to the authority of the Exchequer (through whom their Records have been transmitted to us) came near in the fourteenth century to controlling absolutely Royal expenditure. Inthe case of the Household Executive develop- ment went further. The Privy Seal and its Custos, though itis known to us by hardly any early' survivals' save originals among the Records of the Chancery (where they warranted the issue of Letters under the Great Seal) and the Exchequer (where they warranted payments), became for a time the chief means bywhich the King communicated his personal instructions* :and when the Office of the Privy Seal became in turn (towards the end of the fourteenth century) too rigidly departmentalised, a yet more private Seal (the Signet) and a new Official (the Secretary) taking its place began an administrative development which has .led without a break to the Secretary of State of the present dayf. Before attempting to outline these and other developments of the late fifteenth, the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries we must interpolate a—note on what may be called the floating Civil Service of the medieval period the Officials, not known to us as a rule by surviving Records except in so far as their Accounts * It-was probably used largely for diplomatic purposes as wellas forthe more private side of Royal Correspondence. Itis particularly unfortunate that no series— of Registers survives tous. f Secretaries of State still take Office by receiving the Seals the modem representatives of the medieval Signet..
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