Definition
A Latin term appearing in Scots law, denoting the porteous or porteous roll — a formal written record used in Scottish criminal practice. The porteous roll was an official list or schedule of criminal cases prepared for a court diet (sitting), enumerating accused persons to be called and tried. The term functioned as a Latinized rendering of the vernacular Scots legal term "porteous," which itself referred to this roster of criminal business brought before the court.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early Scottish criminal records will encounter this term primarily in its Latinized form within formal court documents and legal instruments, while the same concept appears as "porteous" or "porteous roll" in Scots vernacular sources. The practical implication is that a search limited to one spelling or language register will miss cognate materials. Burrill's entry points directly to Pitcairn's Criminal Trials of Scotland as the foundational source — that collection covers Scottish criminal proceedings from the early sixteenth to the early seventeenth century and is the primary corpus in which this term appears in context.
The term belongs to a period when Scottish legal record-keeping moved fluidly between Latin, Scots, and occasionally French, meaning that the same procedural instrument could appear under several names depending on the register of the document. Researchers should cross-index under porteous and porteous roll when working through early modern Scottish court archives. The term has no meaningful survival into modern Scots law and will not appear in contemporary legal sources.
Because this is a term of Scots practice with no English common law counterpart, English legal dictionaries offer no parallel assistance. Burrill stands alone among the major Anglo-American historical law dictionaries in noting it, and even there the entry is brief, directing the reader outward to Pitcairn rather than defining the concept independently.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical legal dictionary in the Law Mind corpus to carry this term. The entry is characteristically economical: it identifies the jurisdictional home (Scots practice), supplies the vernacular equivalent (porteous; porteous roll), and cites Pitcairn's Criminal Trials as the authoritative source. No definition of what the porteous roll itself contains is provided — Burrill treats this as a cross-reference entry, not a substantive one.
The reference to "1 Pitc. Crim. Trials, part 2, p. 34, note" is to Robert Pitcairn's Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland (1833), a multi-volume collection drawn from the records of the High Court of Justiciary and related tribunals. That note is where the procedural character of the porteous roll receives fuller treatment. Historical dictionaries not covering Scots law — including Jacob, Bouvier, and Black's early editions — are silent on this term entirely, reflecting the insularity of early Scottish procedure from the mainstream Anglo-American legal tradition.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to Scots law and early Scottish criminal procedure. It has no recognized counterpart in English common law or in American practice. Researchers operating outside early modern Scottish court records are unlikely to encounter it.