CHANCELLOR
A secretary, secretary of state, or minister of a king or other high nobleman.
The king’s chancellor in England during the Middle Ages was given a variety of duties,
including drawing up writs that permitted the initiation of a lawsuit in one of the common-law courts and deciding disputes in a way that gave birth to the system of law called EQUITY.
His governmental department was called the Chancery.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer in England
is like the secretary of the U.S. treasury, but in
former times he also presided over a court called
the Court of Exchequer, which at first heard dis-
putes over money owed to the king but eventu-
ally heard a wide variety of cases involving
money. This jurisdiction was founded on the
theory that a creditor who could not collect a
debt would later be less able to pay whatever he
owed to the king.
Chancellor has also been used as the title for
a judge who sits in a court of equity, for the pres-
ident of a university, or for the public official in charge of higher education in some states.
