A former English government department dealing with finance. The Normans created two departments dealing with finance. One was the Treasury, which held money and other valuables on behalf of the monarch; the other was the Exchequer, which was itself divided into two parts, lower and upper. The lower Exchequer was an office for receiving and paying out money and was connected to the Treasury; the upper Exchequer was a court of law dealing with cases related to revenue, and was merged with the High Court of Justice in 1880.