English kings from the Conquest onward prized feudal incidents as sources of patronage and revenue, but it was not until Henry III's reign that an office devoted to administrating those rights – the escheatorship – was permanently established. Angevin kings relied on a variety of methods to find, seize, keep and account for the lands and rights to which lordship entitled them. They worked well enough to enable John's ruthless exploitation of those resources, driving the barons to formulate restrictions on the king's feudal authority, which became enshrined in Magna Carta. The Crown, however, did not relinquish its rights, and the turmoil in the wake of Magna Carta and John's death emphasised anew the importance of feudal incidents to the king. Between 1217 and 1250, therefore, the royal government experimented with different administrative configurations to manage its feudal assets. These efforts raised issues regarding the span of authority of different offices, relationships among officials, the role of the eyre, and how best to use the resources that came to the Crown. Through this process the office of escheator gradually came into being, until, by 1250, it had become a regular feature of the king's government in county communities.

The foundation of the escheatorships was one outcome of efforts by the council and Exchequer to address Henry III's chronic financial insecurity. Henry's fiscal problems and the Exchequer's response have been extensively investigated. Chief among the many historians of the period, Carpenter, Mills, Stacey and Vincent have exposed not only the harsh financial realities of these years, but also the political turbulence of Henry's court. Favour and factionalism, along with Henry's political whims, strained the king's resources and made consistent fiscal policy difficult, and at times impossible. They also emphasised the court's insatiable appetite for patronage. Despite these adverse circumstances, the council and Exchequer launched a number of initiatives to bolster Henry's revenues, and these created a remarkable degree of stability in the 1240s. While the contribution that feudal incidents played in this financial recovery has been made clear, much less attention has been paid to the evolving administration of those rights. Accounts of the beginnings of the escheatorships have been sketchy and incomplete and have not related them to the broader effort at financial reform. That is the goal of this paper.

Throughout the Middle Ages, England was rife with politics: at every level of society individuals and communities waged contests to acquire, exercise, and retain power and authority. Wealthy peasant families dominated village society and used their wealth and prestige to hold sway over their lesser neighbors and maintain their economic grip on the village, while often vying with one another for ascendancy. In towns, oligarchies of wealthy merchants controlled urban courts and offices to protect and further their commercial and property interests, while trying to keep in check the retailers, artisans, and servants who made up the bulk of a town's population. Yet the oligarchs were no less competitive and scrambled among themselves for power and authority. The counties experienced similar levels of competition and conflict, stratified as they were among the wealthy lords whose property stretched across many counties, to knights who held one or more manors and thought of the county as their community, to smaller landholders who might not have had the wealth to break into the ranks of knighthood, but who had a proprietary interest in county affairs and who would in time become the “gentlemen” on whose shoulders the county community would rest. These men served on juries, became local officials, and had the loudest voice in meetings of the county court.