Definition
Parcel makers were two officers of the English Exchequer whose function was to compile itemized accounts — called parcels — of the receipts collected by escheators during their term of office. These accounts recorded everything an escheator had levied or received on behalf of the Crown within a given period. Once compiled, the parcel makers delivered the accounts to the auditors, who used them as the basis for settling the escheator's final reckoning with the Crown. The office was administrative in character, sitting at the intersection of royal revenue collection and fiscal accountability within the medieval and early modern Exchequer system.
Common Confusion
The word "parcel" in this term is easily misread in two directions. Researchers working in property law may instinctively read "parcel" as a unit of land — its most common legal meaning in modern usage. Researchers in commercial law contexts may read "maker" as a party to a negotiable instrument. Neither reading applies here. In "parcel makers," parcel means an itemized schedule of accounts, and maker means the officer who compiled that schedule. The term is a compound job title, not a description of property or contract rights.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a deeply historical term with no modern operational equivalent. Researchers will encounter it primarily in sources dealing with the English Exchequer, escheators, or feudal revenue administration — not in any active legal context. A few navigational points:
First, the term is tightly linked to the office of the escheator, the royal officer responsible for identifying and taking possession of lands that fell to the Crown through escheat or forfeiture. Parcel makers existed to audit and formalize the escheator's receipts; understanding the two offices together is essential for interpreting either.
Second, the word "parcel" here carries its older sense of an itemized portion or breakdown of an account — not a package or a unit of land (both of which "parcel" also means in legal usage). This semantic overlap is a genuine research trap: a reader encountering "parcel" in an Exchequer context must distinguish between parcel as a line item in an account and parcel as a discrete tract of land, which appears constantly in conveyancing and property records from the same era.
Third, both Black's and Bouvier's cite to secondary sources rather than primary Exchequer records. Cowell's Interpreter and Wharton's Law Lexicon are themselves historical glossaries, which means the trail of authority stops at the lexicographic level. Researchers needing primary documentation would need to consult Exchequer records directly.
Fourth, the office appears to be extinct by the time American law was developing, making this term functionally irrelevant to U.S. legal research except in historical and comparative contexts.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's agree on the essential function: two officers, Exchequer-based, tasked with itemizing the escheator's accounts for delivery to auditors. The entries are nearly identical in substance, differing only in phrasing and citation source. Black's cites Cowell; Bouvier's cites Wharton's Law Lexicon. Neither source provides a date of establishment, abolition, or statutory basis for the office — a gap that both entries share. The reliance on glossary sources rather than primary authority suggests this was already an obscure and largely defunct office by the time these dictionaries were compiled. Neither entry addresses whether "parcel makers" had any cognate office in Scottish or Irish revenue administration, or whether the function survived under a different title after Exchequer reforms.
Jurisdictional Note
This office was specific to the English Exchequer and has no American counterpart. The term has no relevance to U.S. state or federal administrative law.