The 313
Henry I. and in Henry II.'s a
secretarial department in the
affecting the growth of law through its of
Chancery was in the building as the Exchequer,
perhaps in the room in which spring and fall the
Exchequer sat. The Exchequer in
occasion to use the Chancery clerks, the
periods of the Exchequer kept :t from Interfering much
with the Chancery. At that time there was no notion
that different offices or departments should have
buildings, or officers separate rooms. Indeed there
not yet much separation in the king's great official family.
But the Chancery staff growing with the in-
crease of writs and royal letters and documents of all
sorts, Becket did much to an which a
humbler office before him, further
in its dignity through William Longchamp at the
ning of Richard I/s reign.1 But perhaps it Hubert
Walter's great work as Chancellor that brought Chancery
to the point of separation from the Exchequer at the
beginning of John's reign and inspired the of
the great Chancery enrolments.
In the matter of enrolments the Exchequer
with the pipe rolls which began under Henry L, and
renewed and made continuous under Henry II. These
perhaps suggested the plea rolls of the king's courts,
which began regularly in 1194, Then came the Chan-
cery rolls, which began with the charter rolls in 1199
were followed almost immediately by the patent and
close rolls.2 To the exceptional efficiency and regularity
1 Soon the Chancellors were too great and dignified to do much routine
work and we begin to hear of vice-chancellors.
3 These three types of royal letters had been differentiating under
Henry II., and appear under these names with the beginning of enrolments.
Charters, letters patent, and letters close "were the instruments by which
the kings of England made grants and transacted much public business of
importance. * By the first their more solemn acts were declared, by the
second their more public directions promulgated, and by the third ^ they
intimated their private instructions to individuals.1 These three series of
records contain grants of lands, offices, privileges, and the like to indi-
viduals or communities, mandates to royal officers, etc,; the patent and