Chancellor of the Exchequer his duty to distribute as fairly as he can." The chancellor has considerable control over other departments as it is the Treasury which sets Departmental Expenditure Limits. The amount of power this gives to an individual chancellor depends on his personal forcefulness, his status within his party and his relationship with the prime minister. Gordon Brown, who became chancellor when Labour came into Government in 1997, had a large personal power base in the party. Perhaps as a result, Tony Blair chose to keep him in the same position throughout his ten years as prime minister; making Brown an unusually
Chancellor of the High Court the Rolls), an additional judicial office, The Vice-Chancellor of England, was created by the Administration of Justice Act 1813 to share the work. With the transfer of the equity jurisdiction to the Court of Chancery from the Court of Exchequer, two Vice-Chancellors were added in 1841 by the Chancery Act 1841, with the caveat that no successor for the second of the two new judges (James Wigram) could be appointed. Soon Lancelot Shadwell (the Vice-Chancellor of England at the time the bill came into effect) left office and the three Vice-Chancellors became of equal status, with the "of England" dropped.