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
Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer The Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer was the senior judge who presided over the Court of Exchequer (Ireland). The Irish Exchequer was a mirror of the equivalent court in England and one of the four courts which sat in the building still called The Four Courts. The title Chief Baron was first used in 1309 for Walter de Islip. In the early centuries it was partly a political office, and as late as 1442 the Lord Treasurer of Ireland thought it necessary to recommend that the Chief Baron should always be a properly