Chancellor of the Exchequer to parliament. This includes alcohol, which is otherwise banned under parliamentary rules. Previous chancellors have opted for whisky (Kenneth Clarke), gin and tonic (Geoffrey Howe), brandy and water (Benjamin Disraeli and John Major), spritzer (Nigel Lawson) and sherry and beaten egg (William Gladstone). The recent chancellors, George Osborne, Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown, opted for water. In fact Darling drank what was named "Standard Water" in reference to, and support of, the London "Evening Standard" newspaper's campaign to have plain tap water available in restaurants at no charge to customers. The chancellor has a robe of office, similar to that
Exchequer of Pleas involved in the Exchequer of Pleas as a check on the Lord High Treasurer. He evolved out of the Lord Chancellor's clerk, or "clericus cancellari", who sat in the Exchequer and was responsible for correcting and sealing writs of summons, also holding the Exchequer's copy of the Great Seal. The earliest appearances of such a clerk in the records come from 1220, when a document was signed by Robert de Neville, "cancellarius". The Lord Chancellors of the time were clergymen with little interest in judicial or fiscal matters; as a result, the clerk became more independent from the Chancellor and,