In historical terms, the annual Budget is a relatively new invention. Its origins, however, lie in centuries of monarchs mismanaging the country's finances.
The office of the Treasurer began life within that of the Exchequer, which was responsible for managing the Royal revenues and for issuing and collecting cash. Having been established at the time of the Norman invasion in the 11th century, the Exchequer did not receive its first major reform until the reign of Elizabeth 1. Following reform in the 1580s, a deficit was quickly turned into a surplus.
But that did little to stop a string of monarchs continuing to squander the country's tax revenues and rack up debts. Charles II landed the country's finances in such a mess that the Dutch managed to seize the Royal Charles, the navy's flagship, in 1667.
This humilation prompted another spate of reform and the establishment of the principle that even if Parliament has approved of expenditure it needs the approval of the Treasury. It is a rule that still stands today.
It was not until the early 18th century that a version of the annual Budget emerged. The origins of the word Budget lie in the term "bougette" - a wallet in which documents or money could be kept. While at first referring only to the Chancellor's annual speech on the country's finances, the word quickly became used for any financial statement or plan.
The beginnings of what we have come to know as the Budget did not immediately act as a complete safeguard for Britain's finances. The bursting of the South Sea Bubble in 1720, for example, wrecked the country's balance sheet and led to the imprisonment of the Chancellor in the Tower of London. Toward the end of the same century, in 1789, Pitt the Younger introduced income tax.
Budget Day has historically been held during Spring because the collection of the Land Tax took place in April, and much of the country's wealth derived from agriculture.