Legal Definitions - Black Book of the Exchequer

The Black Book of the Exchequer is a historical record book originating from 13th-century England. It served as a vital repository for a wide array of official state documents, including international treaties, formal agreements (conventions), royal charters granting rights or lands, and papal bulls (official decrees from the Pope). Essentially, it was a comprehensive collection designed to preserve critical legal, political, and ecclesiastical communications that shaped the English government and society.

Here are some examples illustrating the types of documents that would have been recorded in the Black Book of the Exchequer:

• Imagine a scenario where the English Crown negotiated a significant peace treaty with a neighboring kingdom, such as Scotland, to resolve border disputes and establish trade routes. This detailed agreement, outlining the terms of peace and future relations, would have been meticulously copied and entered into the Black Book of the Exchequer.

  This illustrates how the book served as a permanent record for crucial international agreements ("treaties" and "conventions"), ensuring that the precise terms of such a vital state document were preserved for future reference and enforcement.

• Consider a situation where a monarch issued a royal charter granting specific privileges to a powerful noble family, perhaps confirming their ownership of vast estates or bestowing upon them the right to collect tolls on a major road. Such a charter, detailing these valuable legal rights and responsibilities, would have been transcribed into the Black Book.

  This demonstrates the book's role in documenting "charters," which were official grants from the sovereign, establishing legal rights and obligations for individuals, towns, or institutions within England.

• Suppose the Pope issued a papal bull, a formal decree, that had significant implications for the English church, such as confirming the establishment of a new monastery or outlining new rules for clerical appointments. This important religious and legal directive, affecting the structure and operation of the church within England, would have been carefully recorded in the Black Book.

  This highlights the inclusion of "papal bulls," showing how even documents originating from the highest authority of the Roman Catholic Church, when they had direct and significant implications for the English state or its institutions, were deemed important enough to be preserved in this national record.