Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Lord Chancellor (as seen in several of the portraits depicted below). In recent times, it has only regularly been worn at Coronations, but some chancellors (at least until the 1990s) have also worn it when attending the Trial of the Pyx as Master of the Mint. According to George Osborne, the robe (dating from Gladstone's time in office, and worn by the likes of Lloyd George and Churchill) 'went missing' during Gordon Brown's time as chancellor. Although the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland had been united by the Acts of Union 1800 (39 & 40 Geo. III
Exchequer of Pleas At this point, the Exchequer of Pleas formally ceased to exist. The Exchequer's position as a court originally came from an informal process of argument between the king and his debtors as to how much money was owed; by the 13th century, this had evolved into formal court proceedings. Therefore, its initial jurisdiction, as defined by the Statute of Rhuddlan, was as a court where only the king could bring cases. The Exchequer became the first "tax court", where the king was the plaintiff and the debtor the defendant. The king was represented by the Attorney General, allowing him to