Place Name
Richard FitzNeal (about 1130 – September 10, 1198) was the Bishop of London who was in the service of Henry II holding the post of Lord Treasurer for almost 40 years. In 1177 the monarch asked FitzNeal to write a book about his work. The book, Dialogue Concerning the Exchequer (Dialogus de Scaccario), is the first administrative treatise of the Middle Ages, a unique source of information on royal finances and the methods of collecting them in the 12thCentury. Its preface makes the politically astute comment that it is not the function of the exchequer officials to decide on the merit of royal policy, merely to execute it. He was later rewarded with the position of Bishop of London from 1189 until his death in 1198. This is one of a small number of Edwardian streets built in 1911 that are named after bishops of London, who were lords of the manor of Fulham. Their former summer house, Fulham Palace, is a few miles away and Wormholt, as the area was referred to, was considered the waste ground of the manor and used for “depasturing cattle and swine of copyhold tenants”.
