Definition
Master of the Rolls. An ancient judicial office of English law, originally administrative in character, that evolved into one of the most senior judicial positions in England and Wales.
1. Historical sense. The officer responsible for keeping the rolls and grants passing under the great seal, and the records of the Court of Chancery. In this capacity the Master of the Rolls exercised extensive judicial functions as an assistant or subordinate judge of Chancery, presiding over a separate court that ranked immediately below the Lord Chancellor. The office predates the Norman Conquest in its administrative roots and was recognized as a distinct judicial post from at least the medieval period.
2. Modern sense. The President of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, Civil Division, and Head of Civil Justice. In this form the Master of the Rolls is second in judicial seniority in England and Wales only to the Lord Chief Justice. The office retains its historic name while the custodial and administrative functions that gave rise to that name have long since passed to other institutions.
---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The President of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, Civil Division, and Head of Civil Justice; a judge second in seniority only to the Lord Chief Justice. Also listed as: a baker.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; "master" appears in Webster's 1913 as a person having authority or control; one who employs; a chief or principal; one eminently skilled in an occupation or profession.
The "baker" definition in Wiktionary is not frivolous — a master of rolls in the craft guild sense refers to a master baker of bread rolls, reflecting standard guild-rank terminology. A researcher encountering this term in non-legal historical sources should pause before assuming a judicial reference. In legal sources, the term is unambiguous, but in general historical documents the occupational sense is live.
---
Common Confusion
The title "Master" appears throughout English legal history in unrelated offices: Master in Chancery, Master of the Crown Office, taxing masters, and special masters in modern procedural law. The Master of the Rolls is not a species of Master in Chancery, though both offices had roots in the Chancery and both exercised judicial or quasi-judicial functions. Burrill's entry begins to blur this line by running the Master of the Rolls entry directly into the Master in Chancery entry, which can mislead researchers scanning quickly. The two offices were always formally distinct: the Master of the Rolls held a judicial commission and presided over a court; Masters in Chancery were subordinate officers who assisted in specific procedural and evidentiary functions. American researchers should take particular care: the American "special master" (Rule 53, Fed. R. Civ. P.) is a functional descendant of the Master in Chancery tradition, not of the Master of the Rolls.
---
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in English equity materials before the Judicature Acts of 1873–1875 will encounter the Master of the Rolls as an active jurist whose decisions carried real precedential weight. Opinions issuing from the Rolls Court were reported separately and were treated as authoritative Chancery authority, distinct from decisions of the Lord Chancellor sitting in the House of Lords or directly in Chancery. A failure to recognize the Rolls Court as a distinct tribunal can cause a researcher to misread the hierarchy of citation in pre-Judicature equity cases.
After the Judicature Acts consolidated the English superior courts into the Supreme Court of Judicature, the Master of the Rolls became a Lord Justice of Appeal and the separate Rolls Court was abolished. The office persisted but its character changed fundamentally. Researchers tracing the evolution of English equity procedure should treat 1875 as a hard dividing line.
American researchers have limited direct need for this office in domestic doctrine, but it surfaces frequently in three contexts: (1) citation of pre-1875 English equity precedent, especially in trust, mortgage, and specific performance cases that crossed into American chancery practice; (2) comparative legal history work on the development of the judicial role; and (3) understanding secondary authority — English treatises and digests from the 18th and 19th centuries often organize equity doctrine by reference to particular Masters of the Rolls whose judicial philosophies shaped the field.
The Law Mind corpus includes English equity materials and historical Chancery records where this office will appear. Connecting those materials to the parallel American development of special master practice requires care: the conceptual lineage is real, but the institutional structures diverged sharply.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier and Burrill substantially agree on the core historical description: the Master of the Rolls held the Chancery records and rolls, exercised judicial functions in a court ranking next to the Lord Chancellor's, and the office has roots reaching to the time of the Conqueror. Burrill supplies the Latin title — magister rotulorum — and frames the office as an assistant judge, which accurately reflects the pre-Judicature structure.
Both sources are writing from a mid-19th-century English law perspective, which means they describe the office at something near its historical peak of judicial activity, before the Judicature Acts. Neither source addresses the post-1875 transformation of the role into the presidency of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal. This is a significant gap for any researcher consulting these dictionaries today: the modern office is a senior appellate judgeship, not a Chancery officer, and the custodial functions that gave the title its meaning have been entirely superseded. Relying on Bouvier or Burrill for a description of the contemporary role would be misleading.
Burrill's structural choice to transition from the Master of the Rolls entry directly into Master in Chancery, while noting that "Master" applies to several judicial officers, is editorially useful as a reminder of the broader terminological family but risks conflation for the inattentive reader.
---
Jurisdictional Note
The office of Master of the Rolls is specific to England and Wales and has no American counterpart. Scotland, Northern Ireland, and other common law jurisdictions have not used this title. American state and federal courts developed parallel equity administration through Masters in Chancery and, in modern federal practice, special masters under Rule 53 — a related but institutionally distinct lineage.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Receivership and Appointment of Special Masters — Rule 53 (The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia): Useful for tracing the American procedural heir to English Chancery master practice and understanding how the functional role of supervised judicial delegation developed in U.S. courts independently of the Master of the Rolls line.
---