562 The Court of Chancery. [JUNE, 



stated (p. 11) that " the first appointment of the officers of Forste, King, 

 Dux, General, and Judge, was, though not entirely, yet principally, for 

 the administration of justice." As the increase of civilization brought with 

 it an increase of business, the king was compelled to seek the assistance of 

 a secretary ; and his chaplain, as the only person about the household who 

 in all probability knew how to write, was appointed to the office, under 

 the title of " chancellor." As the executive organ of the general ad- 

 ministration of affairs, and ordinarily the most powerful individual in 

 the state, the king was necessarily constantly beset with suitors of all 

 descriptions ' ' To receive the petitions and supplications of the subjects, 

 and to make out the writs and mandates," accordingly became the business 

 of the secretary. About the same time, the occasion for an official mark 

 of ratification to the national documents, gave birth to the existence of a 

 great or royal seal ; and the duty of seeing it properly affixed, together 

 with the custody of the seal itself, formed the office of a lord keeper. 

 The general similarity of their functions produced the frequent union of 

 chancellor and lord keeper in the same individual. The offices them- 

 selves were, nevertheless, originally distinct. Statutory enactment, first 

 in the reign of Henry III., and afterwards of Elizabeth, provided for 

 their conjunction ; though, an instance of separation is to be found in 

 the person of Sir Samuel Harcourt, who, in 1710, was created lord 

 keeper, and, three years afterwards, chancellor. The original Court of 

 Chancery appears to have been nothing more than the office in which 

 the business of these two functions was conducted, for we find (p. 16) 

 " The Chancery in the time of William I. was a college of clerks, in- 

 stituted to form and enrol the king's writs, patents, and commissions ; it 

 was managed by the keeper of the seal, and was anciently held in the 

 Exchequer, where the great seal was commonly kept, and the writs 

 generally sealed." 



Circumstances, however, were gradually merging into a judicial 

 dignity the mere ministerial functions of the chancellor. An ordinance 

 passed in the reign of Edward I., reciting, that the " people who came 

 to Parliament were often delayed and disturbed, to the great grievance 

 of them, and of the court, by the multitude of petitions laid before the 

 king, the greatest part whereof might be dispatched by the chancellor, 

 and by the justices, provided that all the petitions which concerned the 

 seal should come first to the chancellor, and those which touched the 

 Exchequer .to the Exchequer, and that [[only] if the affairs were so great, 

 or if they are of grace, that the chancellor and others cannot do without it 

 the king, then they shall bring them with their own hands to know his 

 pleasure/' Mr. Parkes asserts, that, by the reign of Edward III., the 

 chancellorship had become an important judicial office ; and Selden, 

 speaking of the increase of work and power of the chancellor, about the 

 period of Henry VI., says, that he was raised " from being the king's 

 secretary, to be the kingdom's judge" " in a word, he is become the 

 kingdom's darling" a circumstance which we fear may induce many of 

 our readers to suspect the identity between the ancient office of chan- 

 cellor, and the more modern one which bears its name. It is probajbly 

 to this delegation of the office, originally confided by the national 

 council to the king, that the chancellor is indebted for his title ot 

 " keeper of the king's conscience ;" if, indeed, as the royal chaplain, he 

 had not previously been entrusted with that honourable, but somewhat 

 weighty burthen. The precise period at which this personal trust of the 

 monarch became thus transferred to his secretary, is a matter of anti- 



