Exchequer

Exchequer, in England, the financial department which receives or pays moneys due to or owed by the Government. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, now an officer of the Government, formerly had jurisdiction in the Court of Exchequer, which at first adjudicated upon cases in which the revenues of the Crown were concerned, but later, by a legal fiction, became an ordinary court of law. Its judges were known as Barons. The word is also used in the generic sense of a state treasury, and colloquially of any treasury public or private.