Definition
An archaic Law French term for a counter-roll: a duplicate or parallel record maintained alongside an original roll or register, serving as a check upon it. In medieval English administrative practice, two or more rolls were kept of the same transactions — one by the primary officer, one by a counterpart officer — so that each could be verified against the other. The conterrolle was the secondary or checking roll in that system. The term appears in Statute of Westminster I (1275), c. 10, in connection with the keeping of official records.
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Common Confusion
CONTERROLLE should not be confused with the officer called the Comptroller or Controller, though the terms share a common root. The conterrolle is the document — the roll itself — while the comptroller is the official responsible for maintaining it or for checking accounts by means of it. Historical sources occasionally blur this distinction by treating the term as if it referred to the supervisory function rather than the physical record. Researchers encountering "conterrolle" in medieval or early modern texts should read it as a record or instrument, not a title.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in Law French sources, early English statutes, and treatises on medieval administrative or fiscal procedure. Researchers working in pre-modern English legal materials — particularly sources touching on the Exchequer, the courts of record, or the management of royal revenues — will encounter it most often in passing references, as Burrill does, directing the reader elsewhere (to "Counter-roll"). The practical significance is navigational: the entry in Burrill is a stub pointing to a fuller discussion under a different headword, so researchers who stop at "conterrolle" without following the cross-reference will miss the substantive treatment.
The duplicate-roll practice underlying this term has relevance for understanding the evidentiary status of medieval records. Because authenticity was established partly by cross-checking rolls, the existence or destruction of a conterrolle could affect the probative weight of a surviving primary roll. In litigation involving ancient records or title disputes tracing back to medieval land transactions, this distinction occasionally surfaces.
The term is also a useful marker of source era. Its appearance in a document signals Law French origin and a period before the standardization of English record-keeping that came with later Tudor administration. Any modern legal history source that uses "conterrolle" without explanation or citation to the original statute context should be read with caution.
No known surviving American legal usage exists. The term is inert in U.S. law and appears only in historical or comparative legal scholarship.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is minimal — a single line identifying the term as Law French, glossing it as "a counter-roll," citing Statute of Westminster I c. 10, and redirecting to the Counter-roll entry. This is characteristic of Burrill's treatment of archaic Law French terms that had no living legal application at the time of writing: acknowledge the form, give the gloss, move on.
The limitation of relying solely on Burrill here is that it provides no functional description of what counter-rolls actually did in practice or why the checking mechanism mattered. Older institutional histories of the English Exchequer supply what the dictionary entry omits. The term does not appear meaningfully in American legal dictionaries of the nineteenth century (Black's, Bouvier's), which confirms its status as a historical relic even by the time of early American legal writing.
The Latin root implied in the practice — the idea of a "contra rotulus," a roll held against another — is the conceptual key, and researchers who understand that the system was one of administrative mutual verification will find the term less obscure than its Law French surface suggests.
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Jurisdictional Note
Applicable only in the context of English legal history, primarily pre-Tudor. No jurisdiction in the modern common law world maintains this term in active use. Its relevance is confined to historical research into English administrative and fiscal records.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Public Records and Enrolled Documents
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Medieval English Administrative Law
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Comptroller and Auditing Functions (historical)
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