PIOUS USES. (USES, or more properly the Office of the Clerk of the Pipe, a very ancient office in the court of Exchequer. It was formerly at Westminster, but was removed to Somerset House towards the close of the last century, where the duties of the office were performed, and where the records belonging to it were kept, till the abolition of the office of clerk of the pipe, and with it that of the comptroller of the pipe, by the act 3 & 4 William IV. c. 99. By that act the records which had been accumulated in the performance of the duties of this office were transferred to the custody of the king's remembrancer of the ex chequer.
The business of the office had been much reduced by an act of 52 George III., which transferred the management of portions of the land revenue of the crown to the office of woods and forests, and by acts of 1 & 2 George I V. c. 121, and 3 Geo. IV. c. 88, which transfbrred the duty of recording what were called the foreign accounts, or those of supplies granted by parliament, to the audit and tax offices.
Still in this office was made up year by year the record called the great roll of the pipe, or more correctly the great roll of the exchequer, in which was entered the revenue accruing to the crown in the different counties of the realm, for the charging and discharging the sheriffs and other accountants. Of this roll the deputy clerk of the pipe gives the follow ing account in reply to the circular questions of the Commissioners on the Public Records in 1832 :—° The ancient revenues here recorded were either certain or casual. The certain revenue consisted of farms, fee farms, castle rents, and other rents of various Inds the casual part was composed of fines, issues, amercements, recognizances, profits of lands and tenements, goods and chattels received into the hands of the crown on of extents, outlawry, diem clausit extremum, and other writs and processes ; wards, marriages, reliefs, suits, seiguories, felons' goods, deodands, and other profits casually arising to the crown by virtue of its prerogative." (Rep of Commissioners of Public Re 1837, p. 196.) Of these annual rolls there is a series commencing iu the second year of King Henry II., in the year of our Lord 1155, and continued to the breaking up of the office in 1834. It is justly spoken of by Madox, the author of The History of the Exchequer,' as " a most stately record," and it is said that no country in Europe possesses any record that cau be compared with it. Two only of these rolls have been lost. It approaches, as we see, in antiquity to about seventy years from the date of the preparation of the great survey of England by the Conqueror, known by the name of Domesday Book.' It
abounds with valuable notices of the persons who are distinguished in English history through the whole of this period, and ofthe transactions of the time, re corded iu every instance by a con temporaneous hand.
There is one roll of a still earlier date, which has evidently been saved by some fortunate chance when the other rolls of the same reign perished. It was for merly thought to be the roll of the 1st 3f Henry IL; but the antiquaries of the seventeenth century, on an imperfect survey of its contents, determined that it belonged to the fifth year of King Stephen. Accordingly it has been re garded in the office as a roll of that reign, and as the roll of the 5th of Stephen it has been repeatedly quoted by historical writers, and especially by Dugdale, in his History of the Baronage of England,' and who, in numerous instances, has referred facts mentioned in it to the fifth year in the reign of Stephen. Madox also often quotes it as the roll of the 5th of Stephen, though he saw enough in it to lead him to refer it to the reign of Henry I. This roll has been printed and published by the late Commissioners on the Public Records, and Mr. Hunter, one of the sub-com missioners, prefixed to it a disquisition on the year to which it belongs, in which he has shown that it is the roll of the thirty-first year of the reign of King _Henry I.: thus carrying it back into the reign of one of the sons of the Con queror, from which scarcely any national record except this has descended, and removing at once all the great historical difficulties which have arisen from re ferring it to the reign of his successor Stephen.
The Commissioners on the Public Records have printed other portions of the early pipe rolls, but the volumes have not been completed.
Beside the great roll, there was a similar roll prepared by the comptroller of the pipe, which has been called the chancellor's roll. This series is far less complete than the other ; and as it differed but slightly from the great roll, and was never consulted, and as it appeared desirable that access should be made easier to it than could be the case while it remained in the custody of the officers of the exchequer, the late Commis sioners on the Public Records directed the removal of it to the British Museum. As to the name of Pipe applied to this officer and to the great roll of the ex chequer, one conjecture is, that the rolls are so called because in form they re semble pipes, another that they were transmitted through a certain pipe from one room of the exchequer to another It may be consideted an undecided ques. Lion.