Definition
In old English law, the scaccarium was the chequered cloth — resembling a chess-board in its pattern of alternating squares — that covered the accounting table used in the English royal treasury. On this cloth, royal accountants marked and tallied sums due to the crown by moving counters across the grid, using the physical layout to track columns of figures much as an abacus tracks calculations. The term is most significant as the etymological and institutional source of the name of the Court of Exchequer (curia scaccarii): the court took its name from this cloth and the accounting practice associated with it.
The word is used in historical legal sources in two closely related senses:
1. The physical object — the chequered counting cloth itself.
2. By metonymy, the institution — the Exchequer as a whole, including both its revenue-collection function and its judicial branch.
Common Confusion
Scaccarium is sometimes loosely equated with the Court of Exchequer as if the two terms are interchangeable. They are related but not identical. Scaccarium, strictly, refers to the cloth and the accounting apparatus from which the court took its name; curia scaccarii is the technically precise term for the court. In practice, many historical sources — including Burrill — use scaccarium as a direct synonym for the Exchequer institution, and researchers will encounter both usages in the corpus without clear distinction.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter scaccarium almost exclusively in medieval and early modern English legal sources. Its primary value is institutional rather than doctrinal: understanding it is necessary for navigating records and treatises that discuss the origins and functions of the Court of Exchequer, one of England's three principal common law courts before the Judicature Acts of 1873–1875.
Several research traps are worth noting. First, the term appears in Latin legal records — plea rolls, writs, and fiscal documents — where it may refer either to the physical accounting instrument or to the administrative body supervising royal revenues. Context determines which sense is operative. Second, sources that discuss the Exchequer's dual character — as both a revenue authority and a court of law — may shift between scaccarium and curia scaccarii without signaling the shift. A researcher tracing jurisdictional boundaries between the Exchequer's revenue side and its equity or common law side must watch for this. Third, Fleta (lib. 2, c. 25), cited by Burrill, is among the earliest detailed treatments of the Exchequer's structure; researchers working in thirteenth-century English administrative law will find scaccarium used there in its fullest institutional sense.
The term has no meaningful modern legal life. Its research value is entirely historical — as a key to unlocking the nomenclature of Exchequer records, early fiscal statutes, and treatises on the English revenue system.
Historical Dictionary Support
All five source dictionaries agree on the core definition and all trace it to the same passage: Blackstone's Commentaries, Book III, chapter on the Court of Exchequer. The convergence is nearly verbatim — each source reproduces or closely paraphrases Blackstone's account of the chequered cloth, the counter-based accounting method, and the institutional name derived from it.
Burrill adds modestly to the other sources by citing Fleta and Spelman alongside Blackstone, grounding the term more firmly in medieval legal literature and confirming its use in the Latin legal vocabulary of the thirteenth century. Burrill also treats scaccarium as a direct entry-word equivalent to "Exchequer," treating the metonymic shift as settled rather than notable — a useful indicator that by the time of Burrill's compilation, the cloth's institutional meaning had fully absorbed its material meaning.
None of the historical dictionaries addresses the Exchequer's abolition as a separate court (effected by the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873), which means that researchers relying solely on these sources will find no guidance on the institutional endpoint. The historical dictionaries are, by their nature, backward-looking here. The term scaccarium had already become an archaism well before its courts were formally merged.
Jurisdictional Note
Scaccarium is specific to English legal history and has no equivalent in other common law jurisdictions. Courts styled "Exchequer" existed in Scotland (Court of Exchequer in Scotland) and Ireland (Irish Court of Exchequer), and sources concerning those courts may occasionally use the Latin term, but the term's primary reference is always to the English institution.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Court of Exchequer; English Fiscal Administration; Courts of Common Law (Historical)