Definition
In old Scots law, a roll or catalogue delivered by the justice-clerk to the coroner listing the names of persons who had been indicted, enabling the coroner to locate, attach, and arrest them. Also called the Porteous Roll. The term belongs to the procedural apparatus of historic Scottish criminal administration and has no modern legal application.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a historical term of Scots law with no surviving operational significance. Researchers encountering "Porteous" or "Porteous Roll" in pre-Union or early post-Union Scottish legal records should understand it as a mechanism for translating indictment into arrest — essentially a precursor function to what later became more formalized warrant processes. The term appears in records of the Scottish justice ayres and related criminal court proceedings.
The name also carries strong associative weight from the Porteous Riots of 1736 in Edinburgh, a famous episode involving Captain John Porteous of the City Guard. Researchers working in Scottish legal history may encounter the term in both its technical procedural sense and in connection with that episode; the two uses are unrelated in origin, the riot taking its name from a person, not the legal instrument. Conflation is a real risk in archival and secondary source reading.
Black's sources this term to Bell, referring to William Bell's Dictionary and Digest of the Law of Scotland, the standard Scots law reference of the period. Researchers unable to locate adequate context in the Black's entry should consult Bell directly for fuller procedural description.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's editions are in close agreement: the Porteous is a roll delivered by the justice-clerk to the coroner containing the names of indicted persons for purposes of arrest. The second edition entry is truncated in the available source material but does not appear to depart from the first edition's substance. Neither edition provides meaningful procedural detail beyond the bare functional description, and both defer to Bell for authority. The entries reflect Black's characteristic treatment of rare Scots law terms — brief, citation-dependent, and without elaboration on the broader institutional context in which the instrument operated.
Jurisdictional Note
Exclusively Scots law. The term has no equivalent usage in English common law, Irish law, or American law. It is relevant only to historical research involving Scottish criminal procedure prior to the modernization of Scottish courts.