Definition
A Law French phrase meaning "the king wills" or "the king wishes." Le roy voet was the formal expression used in the royal assent to parliamentary legislation, specifically as the opening words of the Crown's affirmative answer to petitions presented by the House of Commons. When the sovereign (or the sovereign's representative) pronounced or endorsed this phrase, it signified royal approval, transforming a parliamentary petition or bill into law. The phrase belongs to the formulaic language of the English Parliament's medieval and early modern procedures, where fixed French-language formulas governed the exchange between the Crown and the legislature.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No entry. The phrase does not appear in modern general usage.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry. The phrase was confined to parliamentary and legal technical vocabulary even in the nineteenth century.
The phrase has no meaningful foothold in ordinary English at any period. Its significance is entirely procedural and constitutional, tied to the formal rituals of royal assent in the English Parliament.
Common Confusion
Le roy voet should be distinguished from the better-known royal assent formula Le roy le veult ("the king wishes it"), which is the standard affirmative response to a public bill presented to the Crown for assent in the modern parliamentary tradition. The distinction is subtle: le roy voet appears specifically in the older form of response to Commons petitions and carries a slightly different grammatical construction. Burrill records it as the opening of a longer formula — le roy voet que de cy en avant, &c. ("the king wills that from henceforth...") — signaling prospective legislative command rather than simple assent to a completed measure. Researchers encountering either formula in historical sources should note which procedural context applies, as the two are easily conflated.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in English constitutional history, parliamentary history, or the history of legislation will encounter this phrase in sources dealing with the medieval and early modern Parliament, particularly in records of Commons petitions from the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. The phrase is a marker of the petition-based model of legislation that preceded the modern bill procedure: under the older system, the Commons petitioned the Crown, and royal answers in Law French — affirmative, negative, or conditional — determined the legal outcome. Le roy voet signals the affirmative response and, when combined with the full formula recorded by Hale, carries legislative force.
The key navigational point is that this phrase belongs to a specific procedural era. After Parliament transitioned fully to the modern bill procedure, the petition-and-answer model receded, and the formula shifted. Researchers reading Hale's History of the Common Law or parliamentary rolls from the medieval period will need to recognize le roy voet as an operative legal act, not mere ceremony. Misreading these royal responses — or conflating affirmative, negative, and conditional formulas — can produce significant errors in interpreting when and whether a particular measure became law.
The phrase also signals the Law French layer in English legal history. Primary sources of the relevant period are dense with such formulas, and researchers unfamiliar with Law French conventions may misread or mistranslate them. The abbreviated &c. following the formula in Burrill's entry indicates a longer standard form; the full text in Hale restores the operative language.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides a concise but accurate entry, correctly identifying the phrase as the opening of the royal affirmative answer to Commons petitions and directing the reader to Hale's History of the Common Law as authority. This is the right citation: Hale's treatment of parliamentary procedure remains a standard reference for the petition-and-answer model of medieval legislation, and the passage at page 51 addresses the mechanics of royal responses directly.
Burrill's entry is functional but minimal. It does not distinguish le roy voet from the later le roy le veult formula, nor does it explain the significance of the full formula that follows — que de cy en avant ("that from henceforth") — which signals the prospective and obligatory character of the royal will as expressed in law. Historical dictionaries generally treat this term as a glossary item for Law French rather than a substantive constitutional concept, which understates its importance as evidence of the procedural structure of early English legislation.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Royal Assent; Parliamentary Petitions and the Legislative Process; Law French in English Legal Sources.