exchequer

Name of the king's court of revenue which is taken from the fact that in early times the accounts were reckoned up on a chequered cloth, resembling a large chessboard, round which the officers sat. It appears that the sums of money received by the treasurer were scored on the squares of this cloth with counters, the process being suggestive of a game of chess.

The English and French words are allied to the Latin root scac, which appears in scaccum, a chessboard and scaccarium, the Court of Exchequer and also the chequered cloth used there. The name only began to be used about the time of Henry I, and before the use of the chequered cloth as an aid to calculation business was transacted by means of ‘tallies’, or notched sticks.

See also chancellor of the Exchequer.