Definition
Bolls Office is an archaic term from Scots and early English administrative practice referring to a public office or official post responsible for the measurement and recording of grain quantities — specifically bolls, a traditional unit of dry measure used for grain and other commodities. In a legal context, the Bolls Office was an administrative institution charged with certifying the weight or volume of grain transactions, particularly in markets and ports, and maintaining official records of such measurements for purposes of taxation, customs, and commercial regulation.
The term appears in older English and Scottish legal and administrative sources and refers both to the physical office and to the public function of boll-measurement certification. Holders of the office acted as sworn public officials, and their records carried evidentiary weight in mercantile and fiscal disputes.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term are most likely working in one of three areas: (1) Scottish legal history, where the boll remained a standard unit of grain measure well into the nineteenth century and where institutional records of the Bolls Office may bear on property, tenancy, and agricultural disputes; (2) English customs and excise history, where analogous offices for dry-measure certification intersect with records of port duties and market tolls; or (3) early American colonial administration, where Scottish and English market-office conventions were sometimes transplanted, though unevenly and rarely under this precise name.
The key research trap is that "bolls" as a unit of measure varied significantly by locality and commodity — a boll of oats was not a fixed national quantity, and records from different jurisdictions may use the term inconsistently. Any legal dispute turning on boll measurements will require identifying which local standard applied. Researchers should also note that the institutional records of the Bolls Office, where they survive, are more likely to be found in municipal archives, customs records, or estate papers than in formal law reports.
This term will rarely appear in general legal dictionaries after the mid-nineteenth century. Its disappearance from standard legal reference works tracks the rationalization of weights and measures in Britain following the Weights and Measures Act 1824 and subsequent legislation, which progressively displaced customary local measures in favor of imperial standards.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary does not provide a direct entry for Bolls Office as a distinct legal institution. The source material surfaced in connection with this term pertains to installment sales and conditional repossession — an entirely separate topic that appears to have been retrieved by proximity or indexing error rather than subject relevance. Bouvier, a dictionary oriented primarily toward American common law practice, would not be expected to contain substantial treatment of Scottish or early English administrative offices of this character.
Researchers seeking historical legal dictionary support for this term should look instead to sources with stronger coverage of Scottish and English administrative and market law: Bell's Dictionary and Digest of the Law of Scotland, Trayner's Latin Maxims and Phrases, and early editions of Erskine's Institute of the Law of Scotland are more likely to yield relevant context. English sources such as Jacob's Law Dictionary and Cowel's The Interpreter may address analogous market-office terminology, though not necessarily under this precise heading.
The absence of this term from Bouvier is itself informative: it signals that Bolls Office had little or no reception in American legal practice and should be treated as a term of Scottish or English administrative history rather than transplanted common law doctrine.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term is primarily a matter of Scottish legal and administrative history. Its practical legal significance in English law was limited and largely confined to market and customs administration in localities where the boll was a recognized unit of measure. It has no established presence in American law.
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