Definition
Rotuli Scaccarii (Latin: "rolls of the Exchequer") are the official record rolls maintained by the English Exchequer, the medieval and early modern royal department responsible for the receipt and audit of crown revenues. These rolls documented accounts rendered by sheriffs, tax collectors, and other royal officers, recording debts owed to the crown, payments made, and the results of periodic financial audits conducted before the Exchequer's barons. The Pipe Rolls are the most prominent series within this broader category, but the term encompasses the full range of Exchequer record-keeping, including receipt rolls, memoranda rolls, and lord treasurer's remembrancer rolls.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term in legal or historical sources are typically working with pre-modern English fiscal and administrative law. The Rotuli Scaccarii are primary sources for the crown's financial and jurisdictional claims over land, offices, and persons — not merely accounting curiosities. Because Exchequer jurisdiction extended into quasi-judicial territory (the Court of Exchequer adjudicated revenue disputes), these rolls intersect with legal history at multiple points: they record amercements, fines, and penalties alongside ordinary revenue accounts.
The key research trap is anachronism. Modern researchers accustomed to clear separation between judicial and administrative records may not immediately recognize that Exchequer rolls carry legal weight. An entry in these rolls could constitute evidence of a debt, a forfeiture, or a royal grant. Cross-referencing Exchequer rolls against plea rolls or patent rolls is often necessary to reconstruct a complete legal picture of a transaction or dispute.
For Scottish legal history, note that Rotuli Scaccarii is also the title of the published series of Scottish Exchequer rolls (Rotuli Scaccarii Regum Scotorum), edited and published in the nineteenth century by the General Register House in Edinburgh. Scottish and English Exchequer rolls are entirely distinct administrative series despite sharing nomenclature. A researcher must identify at the outset which kingdom's records are at issue.
The rolls' survival is uneven. Many early English Pipe Rolls have been printed by the Pipe Roll Society, but other Exchequer roll series remain in manuscript at The National Archives (Kew). Access through Law Mind's corpus will largely reflect what has been printed and indexed; gaps in the corpus may correspond to unpublished or poorly calendared series.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's entry is minimal — four words of definition ("The rolls of the Exchequer") followed by the jurisdictional label "English." This brevity reflects the term's function in Bouvier's work: it is a glossary entry for practitioners who might encounter the Latin phrase in older authorities, not a research guide. Bouvier makes no distinction between specific roll series, does not note the Scottish usage, and does not address the Exchequer's judicial functions. For the modern researcher, Bouvier is useful only as a period confirmation that the term was recognized in American legal reference practice, likely because American lawyers consulting English common law authorities would occasionally encounter references to Exchequer rolls in treatises and printed cases.
No other Law Mind shelf sources contain entries for this term, which itself signals that Rotuli Scaccarii sits at the edge of practical legal reference — it belongs more to legal history and records scholarship than to doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
Despite nearly identical Latin nomenclature, the English and Scottish Exchequer rolls are separate administrative series arising from distinct crown institutions. The Scottish Rotuli Scaccarii Regum Scotorum cover the period roughly from the late thirteenth century onward and were published in a multi-volume edited series in the nineteenth century. Researchers must confirm which jurisdiction's records are at issue before proceeding.