Definition
A counter roll. In old English administrative and legal practice, the contrarotulus was a duplicate or check roll maintained alongside the primary roll of a court, exchequer, or administrative officer. The purpose was mutual verification: the officer holding the counter roll could confirm or challenge entries made in the principal roll, providing a check against fraud, error, or unauthorized alteration. The term is Latin, used throughout medieval English legal records, and appears in the works of Fleta describing the administrative machinery of royal courts and household governance.
Common Language
This is pure legal and administrative Latin with no meaningful counterpart in ordinary modern English. The COMMON LANGUAGE section does not apply.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering contrarotulus in medieval English records should understand that the term signals a system of documentary cross-checking, not a single record type. Several research traps apply.
First, the counter roll was not a mere copy. It was maintained independently, often by a different officer, and discrepancies between the primary roll and the contrarotulus could have legal consequences. Treating them as interchangeable is an error.
Second, the term appears primarily in Latin administrative texts and Exchequer records. Researchers working in English translations of medieval sources may find it rendered variously as "counter roll," "counterroll," or simply absorbed into a description of record-keeping practice without the Latin term appearing at all. Awareness of the Latin form is essential when searching manuscript indexes or calendars of public records.
Third, the contrarotulus is closely connected to the comptroller office. The English word "comptroller" (and its variant "controller") derives from the same root concept — the officer who holds the counter roll and uses it to check the principal accountant. A researcher tracing the institutional history of comptrollers, auditors, or exchequer officers will find contrarotulus appearing in the foundational sources describing their function.
Fourth, Fleta — the anonymous late thirteenth-century treatise on English law cited by Burrill — is the primary secondary source connecting contrarotulus to specific offices in the royal household and courts. Researchers should consult Fleta directly (Book 1, Chapter 18 and Book 2, Chapter 27) for the institutional context. Fleta draws on Bracton but addresses administrative organization in greater detail for this period.
Finally, because the Law Mind corpus contains sources spanning centuries of English legal history, researchers should note that the counter roll system predates and survives into the period of formal public record keeping. The contrarotulus concept underpins the logic of roll-based record systems generally, including the pipe rolls, patent rolls, and close rolls of the Chancery and Exchequer.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only direct treatment in the historical dictionary shelf, and it is brief: a definition identifying the term as "a counter roll" with citation to Fleta, lib. 1, c. 18, § 1 and lib. 2, c. 27, § 3. The entry is accurate as far as it goes but offers no institutional context, no connection to the comptroller tradition, and no guidance on how counter rolls functioned within the broader documentary systems of medieval English governance.
The brevity here is characteristic of Burrill's treatment of archaic Latin administrative terms, which he catalogues without elaboration. Researchers should not take the terseness as evidence that the term is unimportant — the counter roll system was foundational to medieval accountability mechanisms. Burrill simply does not develop that significance.
No other shelf source provides a competing or supplementary definition. The absence of treatment in later dictionaries reflects the term's purely historical character; it does not appear in modern legal practice and dropped from active legal vocabulary as the administrative systems it described were reformed.
Jurisdictional Note
Contrarotulus is specific to English legal and administrative history. It has no direct equivalent as a term of art in American law, though the institutional concept — the check roll maintained by a comptroller or auditor — carries forward into American public finance and administrative practice under different terminology.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: RECORDS AND ROLLS; EXCHEQUER; COMPTROLLER.