 The primary responsibility of the Controller of the Wardrobe was to check and control the Keeper/Treasurer's expenditure by keeping a counter roll of the Wardrobe accounts; he went on to have responsibility for checking financial compliance and quality control across various departments of the Household.The office dates from the 1230s.The Controller also had charge of the Wardrobe's archive of state documents, which gave his office a distinctively secretarial flavour.