ess he became the chief
secretary of the king and of the queen, who also had her chancellor.
Such an office possessed an obvious capacity for developing on the
judicial as well as the administrative side. Appeals and petitions of
aggrieved persons would pass through the chancellor's hands, as well as
the political correspondence of the king. Nor was the king the only man
who had need of a chancellor. Great officers and corporations also had
occasion to employ an agent to do secretarial, notarial and judicial
work for them, and called him by the convenient name of chancellor. The
history of the office in its many adaptations to public and private
service is the history of its development on judicial, administrative,
political, secretarial and notarial lines.

The chancellor in England.

The model of the Carolingian court was followed by the medieval states
of Western Europe. In England the office of chancellor dates back to the
reign of Edward the Confessor, the first English king to use the Norman
practice of sealing instead of signing documents; and from the Norman
Conquest onwards the succession of chancellors is continuous. The
chancellor was originally, and long continued to be, an ecclesiastic,
who combined the functions of the most dignified of the royal chaplains,
the king's secretary in secular matters, and keeper of the royal seal.
From the first, then, though at the outset overshadowed by that of the
justiciar, the office of chancellor was one of great influence and
importance. As chaplain the chancellor was keeper of the king's
conscience; as secretary he enjoyed the royal confidence in secular
affairs; as keeper of the seal he was necessary to all formal
expressions of the royal will. By him and his staff of chaplains the
whole secretarial work of the royal household was conducted, the
accounts were kept under the justiciar and treasurer, writs were drawn
up and sealed, and the royal correspondence was carried on. He was, in
fact, as Stubbs puts it, a sort of secretary of state for all
departments. "This is he," wrote John of Salisbury (d. 1180), "who
cancels (_cancellat_) the evil laws of the realm, and makes equitable
(_aequa_) the commands of a pious prince," a curious anticipation of the
chancellor's later equitable jurisdiction. Under Henry II., indeed, the
chancellor was already largely employed in judicial work, either in
attendance on the king or in provincial visitations; though the peculiar
j