Exchequer

In the civil service of the United Kingdom, Her Majesty’s Exchequer, or just the Exchequer, is the accounting process of central government and the government's current account i.e. money held from taxation and other government revenues in the Consolidated Fund. It can be found used in various financial documents including the latest departmental and agency annual accounts.

It was the name of a British government department originating in the Anglo-Saxon period of England and responsible for the collection and the management of taxes and revenues; of making payments on behalf of the sovereign and auditing official accounts. It also developed a judicial role along with its accountancy responsibilities and tried legal cases relating to revenue.

Similar offices were later created in Scotland around 1200 and in Ireland in 1210.

The Exchequer was named after a table used to perform calculations for taxes and goods in the medieval period. According to the Dialogue concerning the Exchequer, an early medieval work describing the practice of the Exchequer, the table was large, 10 feet by 5 feet with a raised edge or "lip" on all sides of about the height of four fingers to ensure that nothing fell off it, upon which counters were placed representing various values. The name Exchequer referred to the resemblance of the table to a chess board (French: échiquier) as it was covered by a black cloth bearing green stripes of about the breadth of a human hand, in a chequer-pattern. The spaces represented pounds, shillings and pence.

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