Roll

In modern usage, a schedule or sheet of parchment on which legal proceedings are entered. Thus, in English practice, the roll of parchment on which the issue is entered is termed the issue roll. In New York, the file comprising the pleadings and other papers necessary to support the judgment, when collected and attached in their order, is called the judgment roll. In England, the rolls of a manor, wherein the names, rents, and services of the tenants are copied and enrolled, are termed the court rolls. There are also various other rolls which have become notable, such as those which contain the records of the court of chancery, which are kept in the rolls office, and those which contain the registers of the proceedings of old parliaments, and which are called rolls of parliament. Old books say there is kept in the Inner and Middle Temple a roll called the calves'-head roll, wherein every bencher was taxed annually 2s., other officers of the house, in consideration of a calves'-head dinner provided for them in Easter term, &c. The word is considered to have originated from an old practice of rolling up a legal document in the form of a pipe; now no longer usual. It appears that court proceedings were noted, as they occurred, on a long strip of parchment, which was rolled up as the entries proceeded, and at last filed away, when it was full, in the archives of the court.

Rolls court

The office appointed for the custody of the rolls and records of the chancery, the master whereof is called the master of the rolls. The phrase is especially used to signify the court-room in which the master of the rolls sits as judge. (Cowel; Hayn. Eq. lect. 2.) Under the judicature acts, the master of the rolls was continued as a judge of the high court, and an ex officio member of the court of appeal, and his non-judicial duties are not affected by those acts; but provisions are made looking towards the abolition of his office when it shall become vacant. Mozley & W. Roman Catholic charities act.

The Stat. 23 & 24 Vict. ch. 134, passed in 1860.

By this act, estates given upon trust, for the exclusive use of Roman Catholics, but invalidated by reason of certain of the trusts being superstitious or otherwise illegal, may be apportioned in chancery, or by the charity commissioners; and a declaration may be made, that a fixed proportion thereof shall be subject to such trusts as are lawful, the residue to such trusts for the benefit of persons professing the Roman Catholic religion, as the court or commissioners may, under the circumstances, consider to be most just.

3 Steph. Com. 76, note.