London - Edward Rutherfurd [147]
Westminster had also increased its dignity when, a few years previously, the Pope had canonized its founder, Edward the Confessor. Like France and several other countries, England now had a royal saint. His tomb, moved to the centre of the Abbey, had become a shrine, and Westminster was confirmed as the spiritual centre of the kingdom.
But perhaps the most obvious change had taken place by the riverbank, for here stood the great hall.
Westminster Hall, rebuilt by William Rufus, was one of the largest royal halls in Europe. Over eighty yards long, it needed two lines of central pillars to hold up its massive wooden roof. So large was it that under its high, Norman windows the king’s judges could hold three sessions simultaneously in different corners. Beside the great hall stood the courtyards, chambers and living quarters of the royal palace. Although the king himself was usually travelling around his huge domains, increasingly his administration was to be found in this one location. And of all its different offices, none was better known or more dreaded than the court now in progress.
“A hundred then.”
Master Thomas Brown spoke quietly. A clerk moved one of the chequers. The court proceeded imperviously while a sheriff sitting at one end of the table nodded nervously. After the throne, this table, known as the great Exchequer, was the most important piece of furniture in the kingdom.
It was a curious thing to look at. Ten feet long and five wide, it had a ledge four fingers high running round its edge, giving it the appearance of a gaming table. Covering its surface was the black cloth marked into squares by white lines that gave the court its name.
Depending on the square it occupied, a chequer might represent a thousand pounds, or ten, or even the humble silver penny that was a common labourer’s daily wage. The chequered cloth was, therefore, nothing more than a kind of abacus, a primitive manual computer on which the revenues and expenses of the kingdom could be reckoned and reviewed.
Every year, at the spring and autumn feasts of Easter and Michaelmas, the sheriffs of the counties of England came to the Exchequer to render their accounts.
First, in an outer chamber, the sacks of silver pennies they brought were tested for quality and counted. If good, twenty dozen pennies weighed a pound. Since the Normans called the English penny an esterlin, which transcribed into Latin became sterlingus, the unit of account had become known as the pound sterling.
Next, the sheriff was given a tally – a hazel stick cut with notches to mark the amounts he had paid in. To provide each party with a record, the stick was then split lengthwise from just below the handle; the two tallies being known as the foil and counterfoil. Since the sheriff’s counterfoil, which established the amount to his credit, was always the longer piece, including the handle, it was also known as the stock.
In this manner, in the twelfth century, the terms Exchequer, sterling, counterfoil and stock entered the language of English finance.
Finally, after satisfying the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the great table, the sheriff’s transactions would be recorded by the scribes.
This was a slower, but all-important process. The scribes would begin by making a draft on tablets of waxed wood, which they scraped with a stylus. The drafts would then be fair-copied on to parchment.
Parchment was not merely plentiful at this time, it was cheap. True, the finest, unblemished vellum made from the scraped and stretched skins of calves was rare and highly prized, but vellum was only needed for such works of art as illustrated books. For ordinary documents, the supply of skins from cattle, sheep or even squirrel was almost unlimited. In England’s Exchequer, the cost of parchment was less than the ink. “And sheepskin parchment is best,” Master Thomas Brown would