CHANCELLOR, an official title used by most of the peoples whose civilization has arisen directly or indirectly out of the Roman empire. It stands for very various duties, and is borne by officers of various degrees of dignity. The original chancellors were the cancellarii of Roman courts of justice, ushers who sat at the cancelli or lattice work screens of a "basilica" or law court, which separated the judge and counsel from the audience (see CHANCEL). In the later Eastern empire the cancellarii were pro moted at first to notarial duties. The barbarian kingdoms which arose on the ruin of the empire in the West copied more or less intelligently the Roman model in all their judicial and financial administration. Under the Frankish kings of the Merovingian dynasty the cancellarii were subordinates of the great officer of state called the re f erendarius, the predecessor of the modern chan cellor. The office became established under the form archi-can cellarius, or chief of the cancellarii. Stubbs says that the Caro lingian chancellor was the royal notary and the arch-chancellor keeper of the royal seal. His functions would naturally be dis charged by a cleric in times when book learning was mainly confined to the clergy. From the reign of Louis the Pious the post was held by a bishop. By an equally natural process he became the chief secretary of the king and of the queen, who also had her chancellor. Such an office would develop 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. Great officers and corporations also had occasion to employ an agent to do secre tarial, notarial and judicial work for them, and called him by the convenient name of chancellor.
The model of the Carolingian court was followed by the mediaeval 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. The chancellor was originally, and long continued to be, an ecclesiastic, who com bined 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. 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 put it, a sort of secretary of state for all departments. "This is he," wrote John of Salis bury (d. I18o), "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 employed in judicial work, either in attendance on the king or in provincial visitations; though the peculiar jurisdiction of the chancery was of later growth. By this time, however, the chan cellor was "great alike in Curia and Exchequer" ; he was secundus a rege, i.e., took precedence immediately after the justiciar, and nothing was done either in the Curia or the exchequer without his consent. So great was his office that William FitzStephen, the biographer of Becket, tells us that it was not purchasable (emenda non est), a statement which requires modification, since it was in fact more than once sold under Henry I., Stephen, Richard and John (Stubbs, Coast. Hist. i. pp.
; Gneist, Const. Hist. of England, p.
an evil precedent which was, however, not long followed.
The judicial duties of the chancellor grew out of the fact that all petitions addressed to the king passed through his hands. The number and variety of these became so great that in 128o, under Edward I., an ordinance was issued directing the chancellor and the justices to deal with the greater number of them; those which involved the use of the great seal being specially referred to the chancellor. The chancellor and justices were to determine which of them were "so great, and of grace, that the chancellor and others would not despatch them without the king," and these the chancellor and other chief ministers were to carry in person to the king (Stubbs ii. 263, and note, and p. 268). At this period the chancellor, though employed in equity, had ministerial func tions only ; but when, in the reign of Edward III., the chancellor ceased to follow the court his tribunal acquired a more definite character, and petitions for grace and favour began to be ad dressed primarily to him, instead of being merely examined and passed on by him to the king; and in the 22nd year of this reign matters which were of grace were definitely committed to the chancellor for decision. This is the starting-point of the equitable jurisdiction of the chancellor, whence developed that immense body of rules, supplementing the deficiencies or modifying the harshness of the common law, which is known as Equity (q.v.).
position of the chan cellor as speaker or prolocutor of the House of Lords dates from the time when the ministers of the royal Curia formed ex officio a part of the commune conciliur and parliament. The chancellor originally attended with the other officials, and he continued to attend ex officio after they had ceased to do so. If he chanced to be a bishop, he was summoned regularly qua bishop; otherwise he attended without summons. When not a peer the chancellor had no place in parliament except as chancellor, and the act of 31 Henry VIII. cap. 10 (1J39) laid down that, if not a peer, he had "no interest to give any assent or dissent in the House." Yet Sir Robert Bourchier (d. 1349), the first lay chancellor, had protested in 1341 against the first statute of 15 Edward III. (on trial by peers, etc.), on the ground that it had not received his assent and was contrary to the laws of the realm. From the time, however, of William, Lord Cowper (first lord high chancellor of Great Britain in 1705, created Baron Cowper in 1706), all chancellors have been made peers on their elevation to the woolsack. Sometimes the custody of the great seal has been transferred from the chancellor to a special official, the lord keeper of the great seal (see LORD KEEPER) ; this was notably the case under Queen Elizabeth (cf. the French garde des sceaux, below) . Sometimes it is put into commission, being affixed by lords commissioners of the great seal. By the Catholic Emancipation Act of 182g it was enacted that none of these offices could be held by a Roman Catholic (see further under LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR). The office of lord chan cellor of Ireland and that of chancellor of Scotland (who ceased to be appointed after the Act of Union 17o 7) followed the same lines.
The title of chancellor, with out the predicates "high" or "lord," is also applied in Great Britain to a number of other officials and functionaries. Of these the most important is the chancellor of the Exchequer, an office which originated in the separation of the chancery from the Exchequer in the reign of Henry III. (1216-72). His duties con sisted originally in the custody and employment of the seal of the Exchequer, in the keeping of a counter-roll to check the roll kept by the treasurer, and in the discharge of certain judicial functions in the exchequer of account. So long as the treasury board was in active working the chancellorship of the Exchequer was an office of small importance, and even during a great part of the i gth century was not necessarily a cabinet office, unless held in con junction with that of first lord of the Treasury. At the present time the chancellor of the Exchequer is minister of finance, and therefore always of cabinet rank (see EXCHEQUER) .
The chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster is the representative of the crown in the management of its lands and the control of its courts in the duchy of Lancaster, the property of which is scattered over several counties. These lands and privileges, though their inheritance has always been vested in the king and his heirs, have always been kept distinct from the hereditary revenues of the sovereign, whose palatine rights as duke of Lancaster were distinct from his rights as king. The Judicature Act of 1873 left only the chancery court of the duchy, but the chancellor can appoint and dismiss the county court judges within the limits of the duchy ; he is responsible also for the land revenues of the duchy, which are the private property of the sovereign, and keeps the seal of the duchy. As the judicial and estate work is done by subordinate officials, the office is usually given to a minister whose assistance is necessary to a government, but who for one reason or another cannot under take the duties of an important department. John Bright de scribed him as the maid-of-all-work of the cabinet.
The chancellor of a diocese is the official who presides over the bishop's court and exercises juris diction in his name. This use of the word is comparatively modern, and, though employed in acts of parliament, is not men tioned in the commission, having apparently been adopted on the analogy of the like title in the State. The chancellor was orig inally the keeper of the archbishop's or bishop's seals; but the office, as now understood, includes two other offices distinguished in the commission by the titles of vicar-general and official prin cipal (see ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION) . The chancellor of a diocese must be distinguished from the chancellor of a cathedral, whose office is the same as that of the ancient scholasticus (see
