Definition
An officer of the English Exchequer responsible for writing out summonses twice yearly to the sheriffs, directing them to levy the rents and debts recorded in the Pipe Roll. The contrarotulator pipe served a checking and administrative function within the medieval Exchequer machinery, preparing the formal written demands that compelled sheriffs to account for and collect crown revenues attributable to their counties.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs almost entirely to the historical record of English fiscal administration and will appear only in sources treating medieval or early modern Exchequer practice. Researchers encountering the term in primary documents, legal antiquaries, or chronicle sources should understand it as a narrow office within the Exchequer's complex division of labor — not a general auditing role or a judicial position. The term will not appear in American legal materials; it has no reception history in common law jurisdictions outside England, and even in English sources it falls into disuse well before the modern period. Researchers working with Pipe Roll Society publications, Exchequer records at The National Archives, or treatises on English fiscal history (such as Madox's History and Antiquities of the Exchequer) will find the term's practical context there rather than in any legal dictionary. Both Black's and Bouvier's trace their definitions to Blount's Nomo-Lexikon (1670), meaning the entry in both dictionaries is a relay of a seventeenth-century antiquarian gloss, not an independent analysis. Treat this term as a finding aid to Blount rather than as an authoritative modern definition.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement, differing only in that Bouvier's adds the parenthetical gloss "rents" after "farms," clarifying that "farms" in this context means fixed rents paid by sheriffs for their counties — a helpful editorial addition given that the word "farm" in its fiscal sense is itself a term of art likely to confuse modern readers. Both definitions cite Blount as their sole authority, which is both their strength and their limitation: Blount's Nomo-Lexikon is a reliable seventeenth-century source for obsolete English legal terms, but neither dictionary adds anything beyond Blount's original account. No definition addresses the contrarotulator pipe's relationship to other Exchequer officers — the clerk of the pipe, the lord treasurer's remembrancer, or the comptroller of the pipe — which would be necessary context for any serious research into Exchequer structure. The historical dictionaries treat this as an isolated entry rather than situating it within the broader Exchequer apparatus.
Jurisdictional Note
Strictly English. The office is a creature of the medieval and early modern English Exchequer and has no equivalent or analogue in Scottish, Irish, or American legal systems. References in legal sources outside England are invariably historical or antiquarian.