[2] J. Horace Round wrote in 1898 that "second only in honour to Domesday Book itself, the "Liber Rubeus de Scaccario" has, for more than six centuries, held a foremost place among our national records.
Prized by officials for its precedents, by antiquaries for its vast store of topographical and genealogical information, its well-thumbed pages have been scanned by twenty generations of students".
The Book contains nearly 300 separate records and texts, including "Charters, Statutes of the Realm, Placita, or other public acts, with private Deeds and Ordinances, Correspondence, Chronicles or Annals, religious, physical or legal Treatises, Topographies, Genealogies or Successions, Surveys and Accounts, precedents and Facetiae".
[5] Among them are texts of the 1166 Cartae Baronum, a survey of feudal tenure; the Leges Henrici Primi, an early compilation of legal information dating from the reign of Henry I;[6] the Constitutio domus regis, a handbook on the running of the royal household of about 1136; the Dialogus de Scaccario, a late 12th-century treatise on the practice of the Exchequer; the Book of Fees of c.1302; a 14th-century treatise on the Royal Mint; 12th-century pipe rolls; deeds and grants of William I and Henry I; a text of Magna Carta; records of serjeanties; and forms of oaths of Exchequer officers and of the king's councillors.
[20] In one of his contributions to the dispute, Studies on the Red Book of the Exchequer (1898), Round wrote: It has now been definitely shown that it is possible, in England at any rate, to publish a work of historical importance, for permanent and universal reference, so replete with heresy and error as to lead astray for ever all students of its subject, and yet to run the gauntlet of reviewers, not only virtually unscathed, but even with praise and commendation.
[22] The view of modern scholars is that, while Round's behaviour and language was intemperate and unnecessarily offensive, there was a degree of truth in his criticism of Hall's work.