Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "bill" or "a bill," used in early English legal practice to refer to a formal written document submitted to a court. In its most specific attested usage, *bille* denoted a bill of exceptions — a written statement prepared by a party recording the points of law to which objection was taken at trial, presented to the court for sealing as part of the record.
The term is not a term of art in modern practice. It survives only in historical sources as evidence of the transitional legal vocabulary of medieval English courts, where Law French was the language of pleading and procedure.
Common Confusion
*Bille* should not be conflated with the modern English word "bill" as used in contemporary legal practice, which carries a range of meanings (legislative bill, bill of lading, bill of costs, bill in equity). The historical term *bille* operated in a narrower procedural context — specifically the preparation and sealing of written exceptions or complaints before the court — and does not map cleanly onto any single modern counterpart. Researchers encountering *bille* in Year Book sources should read it in its immediate procedural context rather than assuming any particular modern equivalent.
Why It Matters in Research
*Bille* appears almost exclusively in Year Book materials from the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, the period when Law French dominated English court records. Researchers working in that corpus will encounter the term in its procedural context — most commonly in passages describing the court's direction to a party to reduce an objection or claim to writing for sealing. The two attested phrases in Burrill (*Faitz bille, et nous l'ensealeromus* and *Faits un bill' de vostre exception, et nous voulons enseeler*) are formulaic court directions: "make a bill, and we will seal it" and "make a bill of your exception, and we will seal it."
Several research traps are worth flagging:
First, the spelling is unstable in the sources. Year Book manuscripts render the term variously, and *bille*, *bill'*, and *bill* may appear interchangeably in the same or adjacent passages. The apostrophe form *bill'* in Burrill reflects scribal abbreviation common to the manuscript tradition, not a distinct word.
Second, while *bille* most often signals a bill of exceptions in the attested examples, the base term in Law French was general enough to cover any formal written document addressed to or filed with a court. A researcher should not assume the bill of exceptions meaning in every instance without reading context.
Third, *bille* connects to the broader procedural history of the bill of exceptions in English law, which has a traceable statutory foundation in the Statute of Westminster II (1285), and later appeared in early American practice. Researchers tracing the procedural lineage of exceptions and error review will find *bille* at the origin end of that line.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole source in the Law Mind corpus for this term, and its treatment is brief but precise. Burrill correctly identifies *bille* as a Law French procedural term and anchors it to specific Year Book passages from Michaelmas Term, 7 Edward III and Hilary Term, 4 Henry VI. These citations locate the term in a span of roughly a century of early English practice.
Burrill does not trace the term's relationship to the Statute of Westminster II or attempt any broader analysis of the bill of exceptions as a procedural device. His entry is a vocabulary gloss rather than a doctrinal treatment. Historical dictionaries generally — including Burrill — tend to record Law French terms in isolation without fully situating them in the procedural systems they reflect. Researchers should treat Burrill's entry as a starting point and consult Year Book scholarship and legal history sources for the fuller institutional picture.
No other major historical law dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus (Jacob, Tomlin, Bouvier) include *bille* as a separate entry, reflecting both the term's narrow historical currency and its absence from any continuing legal tradition.