312 The Period of Constitution Making"
department tinder his more personal control. The com-
pletion of even a slight summary of financial administra-
tion in the later middle ages must, however, follow some
notice of other developments in and out of the royal
official household.
The Norman kings of England had their chapel and
the chaplains of this, along with their other duties, were
the king's writing staff. At the head of these was the
Chancellor, who by Henry Us reign was keeper of the
king's seal. Perhaps he had kept the seal earlier; per-
haps there was a Chancellor who kept the seal of Edward
the Confessor, who first of English kings had a seal.
The seal was a revival, after the dark ages, from the
Roman Empire. Its appearance in England was due to
the continental influence under Edward. His seal was
a double-faced, pendant seal, and the Conqueror's seal
was based upon it. At about the same time feudal
nobles were beginning to use seals, which were displacing
signatures and crosses of witnesses, and in some parts
of Europe (not England or northern France) partially
displacing the employment of professional notaries.
The heading of the king's secretariat and the keeping of
the king's great seal, which meant much control of the
documents authenticated by it, were the basis of the
Chancellor's power as a great officer of state and the
development under Mm of the Chancery as a great de-
partment of administration.
The class of the king's letters which in the course of the
twelfth century became the technical judicial writs had
a notable effect upon the department which issued them:
they greatly increased the work and importance of the
Chancellor and his force, and they brought the Chan-
cellor for the first time into close and professional contact
with, the judiciary.1 Chancery grew rapidly under
1 On the judicial writs see above, pp. 142-144,151,152. It has been con-
venient to deal earlier with Chancery's development, in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, as a court of civil equity. See Part III., §1,3-