Definition
A roll is an official record created by writing or entering legal proceedings, accounts, or other information onto sheets of parchment joined end-to-end and wound into a cylindrical form. In legal usage, the term carries several distinct meanings depending on context:
1. Official court or government record. A roll is any formal register of proceedings, judgments, orders, or other legal acts maintained by a court, legislative body, or administrative office. Courts historically kept multiple named rolls corresponding to different stages or types of proceeding — the issue roll, the plea roll, the judgment roll, and so on — each serving as the authoritative written record of its subject matter.
2. Enrollment. The act of entering a document, name, or proceeding onto a roll constitutes "enrollment," which in many historical contexts had substantive legal effect: a deed enrolled operated differently from one merely delivered, and an attorney "on the roll" held a recognized professional status.
3. Tax and valuation records. In Scottish legal history, a "roll" refers specifically to the record attributed to Ragimund (or Ragimont), a papal legate who compiled sworn valuations of ecclesiastical benefices in Scotland for purposes of taxation by the court of Rome. This document, sometimes called the "Ragman Roll" or "Ragimund's Roll," became a reference instrument for ecclesiastical assessments.
4. Manor rolls. The rolls of a manor — variously called court rolls or customary rolls — recorded the names, rents, and services of copyhold tenants. These were maintained by the lord's steward and served as the operative title documents for copyhold estates. Copyholders held their land "by the rod at the will of the lord according to the custom of the manor, as appears by the roll."
5. Legislative and administrative rolls. A roll of names may designate the official roster of members of a legislative body, licensed practitioners, voters, or any other formally recognized group. "Calling the roll" is the procedure for recording attendance or votes member by member.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To revolve by turning over and over; to wrap something round on itself; to form a spherical or cylindrical body by causing material to turn over and over.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To cause to revolve by turning over and over; to move by turning on an axis; to wrap round on itself, forming a spherical or cylindrical body; as, to roll parchment.
The common meaning describes the physical action of rolling material into a cylinder — precisely how parchment records were stored. Legal usage takes the resulting object (the wound parchment) as its starting point and extends the term to mean the record itself, then further to any official register regardless of its physical form. By the time paper replaced parchment and bound volumes replaced scrolls, "roll" as a legal term had fully detached from its physical origins and referred to any official court or government record.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Issue roll: The parchment on which the pleadings and issue in a common law action were entered, forming part of the record of the cause.
Plea roll: The master record of proceedings in a term of court, maintained by the clerk; the foundational record of common law litigation.
Judgment roll: The assembled record of a concluded action, including the pleadings, issue, verdict, and judgment, which constituted the official evidence of the court's determination.
Court roll (Manor roll): The steward's record of the manor court, documenting copyhold tenures, surrenders, admissions, and presentments. The operative title instrument for copyhold land.
Ragman's Roll (Ragimund's Roll): The Scottish ecclesiastical valuation roll compiled under papal direction; a specific historical instrument used as the basis for Church of Rome taxation of Scottish benefices.
Subsidy roll: A record of persons assessed for a particular tax or subsidy, used in both English and colonial American administrative practice.
Enrolled bill: In legislative practice, the final authenticated version of a bill as passed, inscribed on parchment (or its modern equivalent) and certified as the official enactment.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus will encounter "roll" across an unusually wide range of legal contexts, and conflating these uses produces significant errors.
The most important distinction is between rolls as primary records and rolls as derivative registers. Court rolls — especially the plea rolls of the English common law courts — were the authoritative record of proceedings and could be inspected to verify or contradict what counsel asserted. Manor rolls occupied an analogous position for copyhold title: because copyholders had no deed of their own, the roll was their title. A researcher reading about copyhold tenure must understand that challenges to title went directly to the roll.
Historical sources from the English Year Book period through the seventeenth century use specific roll names — the King's Bench controlment roll, the Common Pleas plea roll, the Exchequer pipe roll — that are not interchangeable. Confusion between these records is a persistent trap in secondary literature. Black's (1st ed.) truncates its entry midsentence in the corpus, so researchers must consult Bouvier and Anderson for the more complete account of copyhold and manor roll practice.
The Ragman's Roll entry in Black's (2nd ed.) and Burrill is a narrow Scottish ecclesiastical curiosity, but it surfaces in sources dealing with Scottish church history and Roman taxation of benefices. Do not mistake it for the more famous "Ragman Rolls" of 1291-1296, which recorded Scottish nobles' oaths of fealty to Edward I — a distinct set of documents with no connection to Ragimund's valuation.
For legislative research, "the roll" in the sense of an enrolled statute is significant because enrollment was sometimes treated as conclusive evidence of a bill's passage, precluding inquiry into whether the enrolled text matched what was actually voted upon. This enrolled bill doctrine has constitutional dimensions in American practice that the historical dictionaries do not address.
Jurisdictional differences in roll terminology also matter: what English practice calls a "plea roll," early American courts sometimes called a "record," and the functions of individual named rolls were not uniformly replicated in colonial or state court systems.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on the physical description of the roll as wound parchment and agree on its function as a record-keeping medium. Bouvier provides the most thorough account of the practical origins of the roll format — economy drove the addition of sheet to sheet rather than binding — and connects it explicitly to the development of copyhold tenure through manor rolls. Anderson's entry is the most analytically useful, distinguishing the roll format from later book-form records and explaining why the roll persisted as a term of art after its physical basis became obsolete.
Black's (1st ed.) truncates mid-sentence in available corpus text, losing what appears to have been the manor roll discussion. Black's (2nd ed.) opens its roll entry with the Ragimund material, which reflects the dictionary's incorporation of Scottish law sources but risks misleading readers who encounter "roll" in a purely English common law context.
Burrill focuses almost entirely on the Ragimund's Roll, making its entry of narrow specialized use. None of the historical dictionaries address enrolled bills, legislative rolls, or bar admission rolls with any depth — areas where modern researchers will need to look elsewhere.
Jurisdictional Note
English common law roll practice was transplanted unevenly to American jurisdictions. Colonial and early state courts often lacked the elaborate parallel roll system of Westminster Hall and consolidated functions into single record books. Manor rolls have no continuing American significance except in historical research into colonial land tenure in jurisdictions with manorial grants (particularly New York, Maryland, and parts of New England). The enrolled bill doctrine, which turns on the legal status of a legislative roll, varies among American states.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Court Records and the Common Law Record System; Copyhold and Manor Court Practice; Legislative Enrollment and the Enrolled Bill Doctrine.