Definition
A Latin term used in old English law meaning, broadly, a scroll, slip, or written paper. It appears in legal contexts with two related but distinct senses:
1. A scroll or escrow — a written instrument or document, particularly a detached or subsidiary writing attached to or associated with a principal deed or legal instrument. In this sense, schedula refers to the physical document itself, a slip or sheet of parchment or paper bearing legal significance.
2. A schedule or list — a paper containing an enumeration of items, such as a bill of costs or an inventory appended to a formal instrument. The phrase schedula expensarum denotes a bill of costs, i.e., a written itemization of expenses incurred in the course of legal proceedings, particularly in admiralty practice.
The term is a Latinate antecedent of the modern English word "schedule" and the legal term "escrow," and its meaning shades across both concepts depending on context.
---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Schedule" — a plan, timetable, or list of items, appointments, or events arranged in a sequence; also a supplementary table or inventory appended to a document.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Schedule" — a written or printed scroll or sheet of paper; a document, especially one appended to a larger document and containing subsidiary or supplementary matter.
The common and legal meanings share the same root, but researchers should note that in historical legal usage schedula carries stronger documentary and evidentiary weight than its modern descendant. A schedula was not merely an administrative list but a formal written instrument capable of bearing independent legal effect — as in the escrow sense — or of functioning as evidence in court proceedings, as in the admiralty bill of costs context.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a term of art in medieval and early modern English legal sources, particularly those written in Latin or Law Latin. Researchers will encounter schedula primarily in:
— Old English real property records and conveyancing documents, where it may describe a subsidiary writing associated with a deed or enrolled instrument. The connection to escrow (from the Old French and Anglo-Latin escroue, itself derived from schedula) means researchers tracing the history of escrow doctrine may need to follow this Latin antecedent backward through the sources.
— Admiralty practice, where schedula expensarum designates a formal bill of costs. Clerke's Praxis Curiae Admiralitatis, cited by Burrill, is the relevant practitioner's treatise for this usage.
— Fleta, the late 13th-century English legal treatise, uses schedula in the context of formal written instruments. Researchers working in Fleta or similar Latin legal texts should expect the term to carry its instrument sense rather than its list sense.
A trap for researchers: the term's visual resemblance to the modern procedural "schedule" (as in a schedule appended to a statute or contract) can cause anachronistic reading. In modern drafting, a schedule is a subordinate attachment with no independent operative force. In historical usage, a schedula could itself be the operative document. Context is decisive.
The admittedly sparse coverage of this term across available source dictionaries reflects its character as a working term of Latin legal practice rather than a doctrinal concept with sustained theoretical treatment.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole source dictionary available for this entry, and its coverage is brief but precise. Burrill correctly identifies both principal meanings — scroll/escrow and itemized paper — and anchors each to a primary source: Fleta for the instrument sense, Clerke's Praxis for the admiralty bill of costs sense. These attributions are reliable and historically grounded.
What Burrill does not address is the relationship between schedula and the development of escrow as a distinct common law doctrine, nor does he trace the term's gradual displacement by the Anglicized "schedule" as legal Latin receded from English practice. Researchers seeking that doctrinal evolution will need to consult sources on the history of escrow and conveyancing rather than relying on dictionary entries alone.
No meaningful divergence exists across sources because only one source is available; researchers should treat Burrill's entry as a starting point and consult the primary texts he cites for fuller context.
---
Jurisdictional Note
Schedula is a term of old English law with no direct continuing use in American or modern Commonwealth jurisdictions. Where it survives, it does so in historical documents, Latin legal texts, and the etymological background of terms like "escrow" and "schedule." Admiralty practice preserved it longer than common law courts, but it has since been entirely displaced by English-language equivalents.
---