Definition
An exchequer information is a formal proceeding initiated in the Court of Exchequer — historically one of England's superior courts of record — by which the Crown, acting through its revenue officers, asserted a claim against a subject for unpaid duties, customs, forfeitures, or other fiscal obligations owed to the sovereign. Rather than proceeding by writ or indictment, the Crown's officer (typically the Attorney General or Solicitor General acting on behalf of the Exchequer) filed an "information" — a written accusation or statement of claim — directly with the court, without requiring a grand jury presentment.
The exchequer information served dual functions depending on the nature of the proceeding:
1. CIVIL REVENUE INFORMATION: A claim to recover money or property due the Crown — unpaid taxes, customs violations, debt on bonds given to revenue officers, or penalties under revenue statutes. This was the dominant use and the one most frequently encountered in Anglo-American legal sources.
2. CRIMINAL OR PENAL INFORMATION: A proceeding to enforce penal provisions of revenue law, including forfeitures of goods smuggled or duties evaded. These overlapped with the general category of criminal informations filed in superior courts, but were distinguished by their fiscal subject matter and the Exchequer's specialized jurisdiction.
The procedure avoided the grand jury requirement and gave the Crown an expedited path to revenue enforcement, reflecting the Exchequer's ancient administrative and judicial role as the guardian of royal finances.
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Common Confusion
Exchequer information is frequently conflated with two adjacent concepts. First, the general criminal information — a prosecutor's charging document filed without grand jury action, used in English courts for misdemeanors and public offenses — shares the procedural mechanism but differs entirely in purpose and forum; exchequer informations were revenue-specific and filed in the Exchequer, not King's Bench. Second, qui tam informations — filed by private informers who shared in the penalty — were sometimes filed in the Exchequer under revenue statutes, but the exchequer information as a term of art refers to the Crown's own proceeding, not a relator's action.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a term of English legal history. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus will encounter it primarily in three contexts:
ENGLISH REVENUE LAW (pre-1875): The Court of Exchequer was abolished as a separate court by the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873, with its jurisdiction merged into the new High Court of Justice. Any source using "exchequer information" as a live procedural term predates this consolidation. Dating a source by this terminology is a useful calibration tool.
AMERICAN COLONIAL AND EARLY REPUBLIC SOURCES: Several American colonies and early states briefly maintained equity or revenue courts modeled on the Exchequer, and exchequer informations appear in materials relating to customs enforcement, especially in admiralty-adjacent contexts. Researchers should not assume the term carries identical procedural weight in American sources — it often signals an attempted adaptation of English revenue procedure rather than a direct transplant.
FORFEITURE AND PENALTY RESEARCH: Because exchequer informations were the vehicle for enforcing customs forfeitures and statutory penalties, researchers tracing the history of civil forfeiture, revenue enforcement, or Crown prerogative over fiscal matters will find this term marking critical procedural nodes. The absence of grand jury involvement is historically significant and connects to debates about executive power over revenue collection.
CORPUS NAVIGATION TRAP: The term "information" standing alone in historical English sources does not default to exchequer information. Context — the court named, the subject matter (revenue, customs, duties), and the filing officer — is required to confirm the classification. Rapalje & Lawrence does not include a dedicated entry for this term; researchers relying solely on that dictionary will find a gap here.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence does not contain a standalone entry for EXCHEQUER INFORMATION, and the source material provided confirms this gap. The dictionary's organizational structure covers many Exchequer-related terms elsewhere, but the specific combination of court and procedure is not assembled into a single entry in that work.
Older English law dictionaries — particularly Tomlin's Law Dictionary and Bouvier's Law Dictionary (American editions) — treat exchequer informations within broader discussions of the Court of Exchequer's jurisdiction and the general law of informations. Bouvier distinguishes between informations in the nature of a quo warranto, criminal informations, and revenue informations, placing exchequer informations in the last category. These sources are consistent in identifying the absence of grand jury requirement as the procedural hallmark.
Blackstone's Commentaries (Book III, treating the Court of Exchequer) remains the most authoritative historical synthesis for understanding the court's dual character — partly common law, partly equity — and why informations rather than writs became the preferred revenue enforcement instrument. No historical dictionary source provides a satisfying account of how the procedure adapted (or failed to adapt) in American jurisdictions, which is the area of greatest research uncertainty.
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Jurisdictional Note
Exchequer information as a living procedural category is exclusively English and ceased to exist in its original form after the Judicature Acts of 1873–1875. In the United States, no federal court was ever styled a court of exchequer with equivalent jurisdiction, and the term has no operative meaning in modern American practice. Researchers encountering it in American sources are dealing either with historical analogy, colonial-era adaptation, or scholarly commentary on English antecedents.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Sixth Amendment — Right to Be Informed of Charges (criminal_185) — useful background on the information as a charging mechanism and its relationship to grand jury requirements across jurisdictions.
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