The Chancellor of the High Court, known until 2005 as the Vice-Chancellor of the High Court, is the head of the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice of England and Wales. This judge and the other two heads of divisions (Family and King's Bench) sit by virtue of their offices often, as and when their expertise is deemed relevant, in a panel in the Court of Appeal (England and Wales). As such this judge ranks equally to the President of the Family Division and the President of the King's Bench Division.
From 1813 to 1841, the solitary and from 1841 to 1875, the three ordinary judges of the Court of Chancery – rarely a court of first instance until 1855 – were called vice-chancellors. The more senior judges of the same court were the Lord Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls (who were moved fully to the Court of Appeal above in 1881). Each would occasionally hear cases alone or make declarations on paper applications alone. Partly due to the old system of many pre-pleadings, pleadings, and hearings before most cases would reach Chancery the expense and duration of proceedings was pilloried in art and literature before the reforms of the late 19th century. Charles Dickens set Bleak House around raised hopes in a near-incomprehensible, decades-long case in Chancery (Jarndyce and Jarndyce), involving a decision on an increasingly old will which was rendered useless as all of the deceased's wealth was – unknowingly to the prospective beneficiaries – absorbed in legal costs. Reform swiftly followed.
