The crisis in Chancery, and impeachment of Lord Chancellor Macclesfield in 1725, was a broadly significant moment in enlightened debate about the effects of economic change. Its significance is underscored by the fact that the contemporary response to revelations of corruption in law and government was not only moral-philosophical, concerned with sociability, civility or utility. The response was also historical, and was concerned with erudite evidence underpinning socio-economic explanation. In the aftermath of the impeachment histories of the Chancery were written by Samuel Burroughs and Philip Yorke as part of a continuing discussion about the justice of equity and the jurisdiction of that court.

These authors were prompted to write in response to the scandal and associated economic dislocation that fuelled ongoing controversies in the court. Yet their histories were not focused on the same questions about the sale and abuse of office that had animated the impeachment hearings. Indeed just after Macclesfield's conviction the sale of masterships was openly recognised as a traditional perquisite of the chancellor's office. His successor, Lord Chancellor King, was granted a pension increased by L1200 in order to compensate for the money he lost now that the practice was discredited and discontinued. If Burroughs' and Yorke's histories of Chancery did not review this particular issue of the sale of office, however, they did focus on the matter of procedural regularity in the functioning of the court.