The office is of great antiquity, the holder having been termed remembrancer, memorator, rememorator, registrar, keeper of the register, despatcher of business.
[1] The Remembrancer compiled memorandum rolls and thus “reminded” the barons of the Exchequer of business pending.
The monarch's remembrancer still assists at ceremonial functions, relics of the former importance of the office, such as the nomination of sheriffs, the swearing-in of the Lord Mayor of the City of London, the Trial of the Pyx and the acknowledgements of homage for crown lands.
There are references to a Remembrancer in the early fourteenth century, and the office of Chief Remembrancer existed by 1348, when it was held by Robert de Holywood, later Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland).
The office of Chief Remembrancer lapsed in 1920, on the retirement of Maurice Headlam, and ceased to exist under the Irish Free State.