Definition
ROLLS. In English legal usage, the official records or registers maintained by a court or public office, so named because documents were historically kept in rolled parchment form. The term encompasses several distinct meanings depending on context:
1. The official registers of proceedings and judgments maintained by the common law courts, particularly the Court of Chancery. The Rolls of Parliament and the rolls of Chancery were among the most authoritative records of the English legal system.
2. The physical or institutional archives where such records were deposited. The "Rolls Chapel" and the "Master of the Rolls" derive their names from this custodial function.
3. By extension, any official register or enrollment of legal documents — including deeds, patents, statutes, and court orders — kept by a governmental or judicial authority.
4. In a narrower modern sense, a list or register of persons duly admitted to practice law (the "roll of solicitors" or "roll of attorneys"), from which a practitioner may be "struck off" as a disciplinary sanction.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A roll is a list of names, a cylinder of material, or a rotating motion. In common English, "the rolls" informally refers to a list of members or registered individuals.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A document written on a piece of parchment, skin, or paper rolled up; a scroll; also, a list or catalogue written on such a document; a register; as, the rolls of Parliament."
The common meaning is unusually close to the legal meaning here — both reference scrolled documents and lists — but the legal usage carries significant institutional weight that the common definition does not capture. In legal contexts, enrollment on the rolls was a formal act of authentication and record, not merely listing. A deed "enrolled" on the rolls of Chancery had a specific legal effect distinct from an unenrolled instrument. The disciplinary sense — being "struck off the rolls" — has entered general English as an idiom for professional disbarment but is often used loosely without appreciation of the formal register it references.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Several institutionally distinct rolls appear across English legal history:
- The Chancery Rolls: The central records of the Court of Chancery, subdivided into Patent Rolls (royal grants made by letters patent), Close Rolls (letters close, directed to specific persons), Fine Rolls, Charter Rolls, and others. Each series covers a defined period and subject matter.
- The Rolls of Parliament: The official record of parliamentary proceedings and legislation, kept from the medieval period onward.
- The Memoranda Rolls: Records kept by the Exchequer of debts, accounts, and financial proceedings.
- The Plea Rolls: Records of proceedings before the common law courts (King's Bench, Common Pleas), constituting the primary judicial record.
- The Roll of Solicitors (or Attorneys): The register maintained by the relevant professional authority from which practitioners may be admitted or removed.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers approaching English legal history will encounter "the rolls" as a source category before they encounter it as a legal concept. The Chancery rolls — particularly the Patent Rolls and Close Rolls — are among the most heavily cited primary sources in English legal and constitutional history, and the published calendars of those rolls (Calendars of Patent Rolls, Calendars of Close Rolls) are standard reference tools. Knowing which roll type to consult for a given document type is essential navigational knowledge.
A recurring trap: "enrolled" and "recorded" are not synonymous. Enrollment in Chancery had specific legal consequences — particularly for deeds under the Statute of Enrollments (1536) — that mere recordation did not carry. Historical sources sometimes use "recorded" loosely where "enrolled" has a precise technical meaning.
The disciplinary meaning ("struck off the rolls") operates on a completely different register from the archival meaning and appears in entirely different corpus materials. Researchers should not conflate appearances of "rolls" in professional discipline cases with appearances in Chancery or property law contexts.
American usage transferred the concept in attenuated form. Colonial and early American courts maintained their own records under various names, but the elaborate English roll system — with its multiple Chancery series — did not transplant wholesale. American researchers using English authorities should be attentive to which roll is being cited and whether the American jurisdiction had any equivalent enrollment requirement.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence treat ROLLS with appropriate attention to the English institutional structure, identifying the Master of the Rolls and the Rolls Court as the primary institutional referents in Anglo-American practice. They correctly link the term to the Chancery system and note the custodial function of the Master of the Rolls as keeper of the records.
The historical dictionaries generally handle the archival meaning competently but give less attention to the enrollment-as-legal-act dimension — the specific consequences flowing from the act of enrollment itself, as distinct from mere preservation of a document. This gap is significant for property law research, where the Statute of Enrollments made enrollment a substantive requirement, not just a clerical formality.
The disciplinary sense receives little attention in nineteenth-century legal dictionaries, which is unsurprising given that organized professional discipline was less systematized in that period. Modern researchers should not rely on Rapalje & Lawrence for the contemporary "roll of solicitors" usage.
Jurisdictional Note
The rolls system in its full elaborated form is English. American jurisdictions did not adopt the Chancery roll series as such, though some colonial courts maintained enrollment systems for deeds and other instruments. The disciplinary sense — admission to or removal from the roll of attorneys — does operate in American jurisdictions, though the terminology varies and "roll" competes with "bar" as the governing metaphor.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Court of Chancery; Master of the Rolls; Enrollment of Deeds; Statute of Enrollments (1536); Patent Rolls.