TALLY. The wooden tally used in reckoning comes from two primitive notions; that of notching (scoring) a piece of wood for counting, as Robinson Crusoe did, and that of the broken stick shared between two parties to a bargain : the developed tally com bines both. Use of this double tally, once prevalent all over Europe, is still frequent in the less advanced countries and not unknown in most. In England, though now nearly obsolete, it was exceedingly common mediaevally and its methods were highly developed; it endured long in certain connections; and its nomen clature survives in many words; to score at cricket (in Pickwick's day "to notch") derives from the single tally, and the verb "to tally" comes obviously from the double one; and other deriva tives are many, if not quite so direct.
In England, however, the chief interest of the tally centres in its public use. This is earlier even than the very early "ex chequer" organization (see EXCHEQUER) ; by a date not long after iloo it was a settled system—a system, moreover, carefully differentiated from any private one and used for money only; and the tally continued to be the recognized form of receipt for pay ments into the Royal Treasury down to 1826. During this long period, though there were modifications of wording, it changed little outwardly save for a continually increasing length ; the origi nal 9in. being extended in one extreme example which still sur vives at the Bank of England to 8ft. 6 inches. This, however, is due solely to the increased number of thousands (notches of the thickness of a man's hand) which the tally might be required to show ; and (apart from any difficulty due to the writing) a i3th century clerk could have interpreted it the revolutionary changes lie, not in the form, but in its employment.
same time it might obviously lead to the lowering of royal credit and to endless confusion in accounts. Assignments were, in effect, payments ; but tallies were essentially receipts ; and as such, from the i3th century onwards, were all entered on and, later, figured in numerous supplementary series of records. Moreover an tally frequently went wrong, and the mediaeval administrator could think of no better device than to substitute a fictitious on the roll, so as to square the ac count. The roll of might thus include actual payments of cash, sums credited long before they were paid or due, and entries which indicate no payment at all, but rather a debt to be cleared later. The difficulties of the modern historian desiring to use these (exceedingly important) records, with none of the contemporary expert knowledge, needs no emphasis.