Exchequer Warrants (17th Century)

Scope and Content

The volume contains transcripts of Exchequer warrants, including grants of secular and ecclesiastical offices, commissions, grants of denization, pardons, warrants to the Exchequer to make payments to individuals for the supply of goods, such as provisions for the army and navy, loans to His Majesty etc. Many of the entries are signed by Thomas Watkins. Folios 54-69 and 108-154 are blank.

Administrative / Biographical History

The Exchequer, was the main financial department of the medieval and early modern English state, responsible for the accounting and audit of Crown, and therefore government, revenue. All payments made out of the royal treasure in the Exchequer of Receipt were made on the authority of the King's writ or by order of the barons of the Exchequer. The warrants contain a very wide range of information on items of royal expenditure: wages to judges, attorneys and sergeants-at-arms; annuities; payments for employment on embassies; payment of debts for supplies of all kinds and for works on the King's buildings; and the repayment of loans to the Crown.

Access Information

The manuscript is available for consultation by any accredited reader.

Acquisition Information

Purchased by the John Rylands Library from J. Baldwin in May 1923.

Note

Description compiled by Henry Sullivan, project archivist, with reference to The National Archives catalogue of Exchequer records at http://www.catalogue.nationalarchives.gov.uk/.

Other Finding Aids

Catalogued in the Hand-List of the Collection of English Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, 1928 (English MS 61).

Corporate Names

Geographical Names