The next important change, about the end of the 15th century, was the gradual substitution of special auditors appointed by the crown, known as the auditors of the prests (the predecessors of the commissioners for auditing public accounts), for the auditors of the exchequer. Accounts when passed by them were presented in duplicate and "declared" before the treasurer, under-treasurer and chancellor. Of the two copies, one, on paper, was retained by the auditors, the other, on parchment, was successively enrolled by the king's and lord treasurer's remembrancers, and finally by the clerk of the pipe, to secure the levying of any "remanets" or "supers" by process of the exchequer.
Besides the two great difficulties of the postponement of financial to legal business, and of preventing the sheriffs from exacting the same debt twice, the exchequer was, as has been seen, hampered in its functions by the interference of other departments in financial matters. Its own branches even acquired a certain independence. The exchequer of the Jews, which came to an end in 18 Edward I., was such a branch. In 27 Henry VIII. the court of augmentations was established to deal with forfeited lands of monasteries. This was followed in 32 & 33 Henry VIII. by the courts of first-fruits and tenths and of general surveyors. These were reabsorbed by the exchequer in 1 Mary, but remained as separate departments within it. But the development of the treasury, which succeeded to the functions of the camera curie or the king's chamber, ultimately reduced the administrative functions of the exchequer to unimportance, and the audit office took over its duties with regard to public accounts. So that when the statute of 3 & 4 William IV. cap. 99, removed the sheriff's accounts also from its competence, and brought to an end the series of pipe rolls which begins in 1130, the ancient exchequer may be said to have come to an end. (C. J.)
In 1834 an act was passed abolishing the old offices of the exchequer, and creating a new exchequer under a comptroller-general, the detailed business of payments formerly made at the exchequer being transferred to the paymaster-general, whose office was further enlarged in 1836 and 1848. And in 1866, as the result of a select committee reporting unfavourably on the system of exchequer control as established in 1834, the exchequer was abolished altogether as a distinct department of state, and a new exchequer and audit department established.