n and Angevin kings, produced the great
institution of the exchequer (q.v.) with its judicial and administrative
sides, and its elaborate forms of account and control. Even before this
organization was developed the Domesday Survey (see DOMESDAY BOOK)--now
recognized as having a purely fiscal object (in Maitland's words "a tax
book, a geld book")--shows the movement towards careful observation of
the sources of revenue. It is clear that William I. initiated a policy
which was followed by his successors, in spite of the serious
difficulties of the period of anarchy during Stephen's nominal reign.
The obscure question as to the real origin of the special contrivances
employed by the exchequer is, strictly speaking, irrelevant to the
financial inquirer, who may be content to hold that, granting the
existence of some Old English analogies, the system, as it appears in
the 12th century, was a peculiar product of the conceptions as to fiscal
organization formed by Norman subtlety. It is the manner in which this
institution held together and focused the revenues and expenditure of
the kingdom that has to be considered. The picture presented by the
"Dialogue of the Exchequer" (c. 1176) is that of a comprehensive system
which secured the receipt of the royal income, and provided a thorough
audit of the accounts by employing processes adapted to the
circumstances of the time. It is, in fact, through the description of
financial institutions that it is possible to ascertain the forms of
revenue possessed by the crown. The ingenuity expended on the
administrative machinery of the exchequer had as its aim the increase of
the king's resources, an object in which the official class of churchmen
and lawyers was deeply interested.

In order to understand the character Of English finance in the middle
ages it is absolutely essential to bear constantly in mind the
identification of the king with the state. Though feudalism (q.v.) was,
in one of its aspects, a powerful instrument for division of political
authority, it, nevertheless, in the particular form in which the
Conqueror introduced it into England, enabled the fiscal rights of the
crown to be established in a more definite shape than was possible under
the older condition. For, in the first place, the actual property of the
crown was more carefully administered as each royal manor came under the
system of accounting. Again, the various claims or dues of the king took
more decidedly