Definition
Allocatio is a Latin term from old English practice, meaning an allowance or allocation — specifically, the formal act by which an accounting officer in the Exchequer allowed or credited a sum claimed by a party in the settlement of accounts. The term functions as the noun form of the process described under allocation, and appears in medieval and early modern English legal records primarily in the context of Exchequer proceedings.
Why It Matters in Research
Allocatio is a term of paleographic and antiquarian significance rather than active modern legal use. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in medieval Exchequer records, Year Books, and early plea rolls — the kind of sources that Burrill's references directly (Memoranda in Scaccario, Hilary Term, 22 Edward I; Townsend's Pleas). The term does not survive in contemporary legal writing and carries no independent doctrinal weight in modern practice.
The key research trap is treating allocatio as synonymous with the modern concept of allocation in the distributional sense (dividing assets, liabilities, or responsibilities among parties). In historical Exchequer practice, the term had a narrower, procedural meaning: the formal recognition and crediting of a sum in an official account. Finding allocatio in a historical source signals that you are in Exchequer or fiscal jurisdiction territory, not general common law pleading.
Researchers moving from allocatio back into the primary sources should note that Exchequer practice was heavily Latinized well into the early modern period, and the same procedural concept may appear under the anglicized form allocation in later sources covering the same ground. The two terms track the same underlying act; the Latin form simply indicates an earlier or more formal documentary register.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole shelf-source entry for this term in the Law Mind corpus. Burrill defines allocatio concisely as "an allocation, or allowance" arising in old practice, with the derivation traced to allocare, and cross-references the reader to his fuller entry on Allocation. The citation to Memoranda in Scaccario (22 Edward I) anchors the term firmly in late thirteenth-century Exchequer records; the reference to Townsend's Pleas places it within the medieval plea literature.
No additional historical dictionary coverage is available in the present corpus. The absence of the term from later dictionaries such as Black's earlier editions is itself informative: allocatio had effectively dropped from active legal vocabulary by the time those works were compiled, surviving only as a term of historical and antiquarian reference. Burrill's inclusion reflects his characteristically thorough treatment of Latin and Law French terms drawn from medieval sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Allocatio is specific to the historical English Exchequer and has no recognized counterpart in American legal practice or civil law systems. Researchers working in Scottish, Irish, or colonial American fiscal records should not assume equivalence without independent verification of local usage.