The reorganisation of the Secretary's Department along the lines recommended by the Peacock Committee Report in June 1932 proved in some respects a more exacting task than the institution of the Establishment Department as described in the previous chapter. The post of ‘Secretary and Sollicitor’ was one of the original triumvirate of the most senior officials in the Bank at its foundation, and the style remained the same until 1706 after which the word Sollicitor was dropped, although the appointment continued to be held by the same person. His Office appears to have been a fairly independent part of the Cashier's Department, and a separate Secretary's Department is not shown in the House List until 1851. His prime responsibilities were to act as Secretary to the Court and to the Committee of Treasury: additionally either he or one of his immediate deputies acted as Secretary to ‘all standing or special committees of Directors’. A natural extension of this work was the attention ‘to all matters in general connected with the Directors’. To these functions, and in the absence of any designated staff Director or Department, there had gradually been added a large body of staff matters; in his evidence to the Peacock Committee the current Secretary, Ronald Dale, estimated that these took up about 75 per cent of the time of his staff, consisting at that date of himself, a Deputy, an Assistant and six clerks.