In some armed forces, commissaries are officials charged with overseeing the purchase and delivery of supplies, and they have powers of administrative and financial oversight.
The equivalent terms are commissaire in French, commissario in Italian, Kommissar in Standard German, Kommissär in Swiss German and Luxembourgish, comisario in Spanish, commissaris in Dutch and Flemish, komisario in Finnish, komisarz in Polish and comissário in Portuguese.
With the establishment of an English standing army following the Restoration of the Monarchy a Commissary General of Musters was appointed on 20 December 1660.
The Commissary General continued to oversee a central office of musters until 1817 when the post was abolished and its duties transferred to the Secretary at War.
[2] The appointment of a Commissary General of Provisions was first made by James II in 1685 to provide for his troops encamped on Hounslow Heath.
As a permanent post the appointment had lapsed by 1694, but a century later it was revived for senior officer of the Commissariat (a department of HM Treasury responsible for the procurement and issue of various stores and victuals to the army and the provision of transport).
[3] After 1869 Commissary and associated titles were used as junior officer ranks by the Control Department (military successor to both the Commissariat and the Ordnance Field Train).
[5] In previous centuries Bishops sometimes appointed representatives, called commissaries, to perform functions in distant portions of their dioceses.
In 1684 Henry Compton, the Bishop of London, resolved to use the commissary system to provide leadership for churches in the American colonies.