Definition
ROL is a Latin abbreviation appearing in historical English legal records and plea rolls, functioning as a shorthand notation within formal documents. In the context of criminal procedure and the old appeal of robbery, ROL appears as part of the Latin formulaic record of an appellum de roberia — the ancient private criminal accusation by which an injured party personally accused another of robbery before a royal court. The abbreviation is drawn from the Latin verb rogare (to ask, to petition, to appeal), and its appearance in plea rolls signals the initiation of this form of private prosecution.
The appeal of robbery was a formal accusation in which the appellor (the accusing party, designated A. in the formula) charged the appellee (B.) with having feloniously and violently taken goods or chattels while the appellor was in the peace of the lord the king. The standard formula recited the place, the date, the manner of the taking, and the items and values involved — including coin, horse, and clothing — with precise particularity.
Common Confusion
ROL should not be confused with the general Latin rogare (meaning simply "to ask" or "to request"), which appears throughout Roman and civil law sources in unrelated procedural contexts — petitions to the praetor, requests for legislation (rogatio), and similar usages. In the specific context of English criminal plea rolls, ROL signals the appellum de roberia formula, not a civil petition. Researchers encountering rogare in continental or ecclesiastical sources should treat that usage as distinct.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval English plea rolls, eyre records, or Year Books will encounter abbreviated Latin formulae that are not always glossed or explained in surrounding text. ROL and its cognate forms appear as shorthand notations within the rigid structure of the appeal of robbery formula, and misreading them — or failing to recognize the formula — will cause researchers to misidentify the procedural posture of the case entirely.
Several research traps are worth flagging:
First, the appeal of robbery is a pre-indictment, private prosecutorial mechanism. It is not an appellate proceeding in the modern sense. A researcher accustomed to modern terminology may read the word "appeal" (appellum, appellat) and assume the record involves a review of a prior conviction. It does not. The appeal of robbery is an original accusation, the appellee's first encounter with the charge.
Second, the formula's precision about valuation — coins in shillings and pence, the horse's price, the robe's color and value — is legally operative, not merely descriptive. Defects in the recitation of particulars could be fatal to the appeal. Researchers tracing the outcome of an appeal should attend to whether the formula was technically complete.
Third, the appeal of robbery declined steadily after the expansion of the indictment system and was effectively obsolete by the early modern period, though it lingered in form in some jurisdictions well past its practical utility. Corpus materials spanning the medieval to early modern transition will show this procedural shift.
Fourth, ROL as an abbreviation may appear differently across manuscript traditions — expanded, contracted, or embedded in formulaic lines where the Latin is run together. Paleographic competence in reading plea roll hands is a prerequisite for reliable identification.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary preserves the appeal of robbery formula as a specimen of the accusation's standard Latin text, illustrating how the appellor (A.) charged the appellee (B.) with coming with force (cum vi sua), wickedly (nequiter), feloniously (in felonia), and against the peace of the lord the king (contra pacem domini regis), and carrying off specific goods. Burrill's entry functions as a formulary as much as a definition, and this is its primary research value: it preserves the template language that researchers will recognize when they encounter the formula in original records.
Burrill does not trace the procedural history of the appeal of robbery in depth, and does not address its decline or displacement by the grand jury indictment. Researchers needing that historical arc should supplement Burrill with treatise literature on early English criminal procedure. The formula Burrill reproduces aligns with the standard forms found in Bracton and in the older plea roll traditions, confirming that the language was highly stable across time.
Jurisdictional Note
The appeal of robbery was a creature of English common law and does not have a direct counterpart in civil law or American jurisdictions. American researchers will not encounter ROL in domestic legal records post-independence. The term is relevant only to researchers working in English medieval and early modern sources.