Court of Auditors (France)

In time, what was once a simple Exchequer of Receipts developed into a central auditing agency, branched off, and eventually specialized into a full-time court.

In 1256, Saint Louis issued a decree ordering all mayors, burgesses, and town councilmen to appear before the King's sovereign auditors of the Exchequer (French gens des comptes) in Paris to render their final accounting.

In or around 1303, the Paris Court of Accounts was established in the Palais de la Cité where it remained until the French Revolution.

Thereafter, the financial specialists received accounts for audit in a room of the royal palace that became known as the Camera compotorum or Chambre des comptes, and they began to be collectively identified under the same name, although still only a subcommittee within the King's Court, consisting of about sixteen people.

Other court officers (conseillers) appointed by the King were created to act alongside the puisne Barons (maîtres ordinaires).

Other courts sprang up in Normandy (1465), Provence, Burgundy, Nantes in Brittany, Navarre (1527),[2] Languedoc and Roussillon, and the cities of Nancy, Metz and Bar-le-Duc.

Some sovereign courts of account were raised from grand feudal estates also existing in certain provinces, and did not therefore form a cohesive whole.