Commonwealth Exchequer Papers

SP 28

1640-1674

A series known as the Commonwealth Exchequer Papers (formerly part of E 163). All the documents, except for a few post-Restoration additions, are of the Civil War and Interregnum period.

The series comprises warrants issued by Army committees and commanders on behalf of Parliament; the records of the Accounts Committee and of its local subsidiaries, whose accounts reached the Exchequer for audit; muster rolls, mostly for service in Ireland; military commanders' and garrison accounts; assessment and other contribution or loan accounts; papers of county sequestration committees; the surviving or gathered papers of smaller committees sitting in London, such as those for safety, wounded soldiers, petitions, arrears (a Common Council committee), wood, fuel, ammunitions, obstructions, Irish affairs, etc, as well as those for the Army, the King's (later the Public) Revenue, the Treason Trustees and the Trustees for the sale of Crown lands and good and fee farm rents and bishops' lands either deficient or scattered.

The Treasury commissioners and the committee for the maintenance of ministers (SP 22) are also represented, as are the commissioners for arrears (1662). Also included are many undated, fragmentary and sometimes fragile documents which have not been sorted.

The series was under arrangement in 1888. Later pieces were added between 1892 and 1936, and again in 1968, 1979 and 1982.

Public Record(s)

English

• Exchequer, Exchequer of Receipt, 1100-1834
• Exchequer, Kings Remembrancer, 1150-1875

356 bundles and volumes

Many of the accounts were in decayed books, which were therefore preserved in files created for the most part c 1955-1975, as part of a major programme of conservation which remains incomplete.

Nearly all the records derive from the collection styled Ancient Miscellanea of the King's Remembrancer of the Exchequer, most of which had entered the Public Record Office by 1858. Ancient Miscellanea was drawn not only from the King's Remembrancer's, but also from the Lord Treasurer's Office and from the Treasury of the Receipt.

Further material remains to be sorted or added from Exchequer Miscellanea.