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
Exchequer of Normandy Exchequer of Normandy The Exchequer of Normandy ("Échiquier de Normandie") or Exchequer of Rouen ("Échiquier de Rouen") was the exchequer of the Duchy of Normandy. According to the "Dialogue concerning the Exchequer", in the late twelfth century there were competing views as to the origins of the English Exchequer, with some arguing that it was an Anglo-Saxon institution and other that it post-dated the Norman conquest, but none arguing that it originated in Normandy. By the time of the "Dialogue", however, there was an exchequer in Normandy. In 1315 the Norman Barons pressed a new charter, the "Charte aux Normands"