Exchequer: Treasury of the Receipt: Chests

E 27

c1255-c1600

This series consists of chests, coffers (smaller strongboxes, usually kept inside chests) and forcers (small containers made of leather or wood, often reinforced with iron) used to provide secure storage for documents and objects of particular value belonging to the Crown which were originally housed in the Exchequer Treasury of Receipt.

Some are known to have been used for storing treaties and other documents of significance for diplomatic relations, and trial plates and other materials relating to the assay of the coinage. In most cases, however, no detail is known of the purpose for which the chests or forcers were created or of their original or later contents.

Some coffers are in SC 16

Two chests still remain in the Chapel of the Pyx at Westminster, one possibly of thirteenth and the other of late fourteenth century date. Markings inside their lids indicate their former use as places of storage for treaty records at a time when these were still secured in the Chapel of the Pyx. At least one standard (a painted or leather-covered travelling chest) and possibly certain of the other chests now in the custody of the Dean and Chapter seem also to be of Exchequer origin.

Public Record(s)

English, French and Latin

11 boxes and chests

All the chests are of wood, with iron fittings and reinforcements; several are painted or covered with hide or cuir-bouilli (leather immersed in hot or boiling water to make it sufficiently supple to be worked, but which hardened on cooling).

Topics

Treaties and alliances

These chests and boxes were all at some time in their history housed in the Chapel of the Pyx, Westminster Abbey. Certain of them were transferred to the Chapter House for safe storage, probably in the second half of the seventeenth century. With certain exceptions, which remained at Westminster, they were removed to the Public Record Office in 1859. One, Lady Margaret Beaufort's travelling chest, was lost in 1985.

The provision of receptacles for permanent archival and secure storage was the direct responsibility of the Exchequer at Westminster. By the sixteenth century the provision of new chests, the repair of old, the fitting of internal divisions; and the replacement of locks, alterations of their mechanisms, and the making of new keys, was a recurrent part of Exchequer expenditure, reflecting the vulnerability of the chests to break-ins and the theft of their contents.