Definition
The formal charging of sheriffs with money received on their account in the Exchequer. In the context of English fiscal administration, apposal referred to the process by which a sheriff who had collected revenues on behalf of the Crown was called to account — that is, examined and charged with the sums received — before the Exchequer. The term derives from the related office of the Apposer, an Exchequer officer responsible for conducting that examination. The statutory basis cited across historical sources is the Act 22 & 23 Car. II (reign of Charles II).
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow, archaic term of English administrative and fiscal law with no modern survival in common legal usage. Researchers encountering it in historical documents, plea rolls, or Exchequer records should understand it as a term of art belonging to the machinery of Crown revenue collection, not to criminal or civil process in the ordinary sense.
The term appears almost exclusively in sources treating old English practice. Researchers working with pre-nineteenth-century English legal materials — particularly Exchequer records, sheriff's accounts, or pipe rolls — may encounter apposal and its cognates (apposer, appose) as procedural vocabulary. The related officer, the Foreign Apposer, is separately treated in Rapalje & Lawrence and Termes de la Ley; that cross-reference is useful when tracing the institutional framework.
One research trap: Black's Law Dictionary (1st edition) includes stray text in its entry on apposal that belongs to a different headword (relating to arrest and civil law). This appears to be a typographical artifact of the original printing. Researchers should not read that appended language as part of the definition of apposal of sheriffs. The clean definition appears consistently across Bouvier, Burrill, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Black's 2nd edition.
Because this term is tied to a specific statute (22 & 23 Car. II) and to the structure of the English Exchequer, it has no direct American counterpart. The concept of fiscally accounting public officers to a central revenue authority survived in attenuated forms in early American state and federal practice, but the term apposal did not travel with it.
Historical Dictionary Support
All six source dictionaries agree on the core definition without meaningful variation: apposal of sheriffs is the charging of sheriffs with money received on their account in the Exchequer, grounded in the statute 22 & 23 Car. II. Cowell's legal dictionary is the common upstream authority cited by Black's, Bouvier, and Burrill, reflecting the term's origin in older English legal lexicography.
Rapalje & Lawrence adds the most context by separately defining the Apposer as "an officer in the Exchequer, clothed with the duty of examining the sheriffs in respect of their accounts," identified as the Foreign Apposer and sourced to Termes de la Ley. This is the only source among those surveyed to connect the procedural act (apposal) to the institutional officer (apposer), making Rapalje & Lawrence the most complete entry for researchers who need the administrative background.
Burrill's entry is the most etymologically precise, noting the derivation from the French apposer and situating the term in "old practice" — a signal that even nineteenth-century legal lexicographers regarded the term as historical rather than current.
None of the historical sources discusses apposal in relation to criminal accountability or misconduct by sheriffs. The charging at issue is strictly fiscal: the accounting for Crown revenues collected, not any penal proceeding.
Jurisdictional Note
Apposal of sheriffs is exclusively a term of historical English law, rooted in the Exchequer system. It has no recognized equivalent in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. Research need not extend beyond English sources.