An early controlment roll is headed 'the roll of memoranda... of the clerk of the lord king of the lord king's affairs' (
KB 29/12, rot 1), quite a useful description of its function. The rolls were compiled to give the clerk of the crown a ready means of checking on the crown cases before the court with which he was concerned, and are at the core of his reference system, as indicated by cross-references to them in other of his memoranda in other series. The name of the current clerk was frequently written at the head of the roll. The title 'controlment roll' was in use by the mid-fifteenth century at latest (
E 164/23, f 22v;
KB 29/83, rot 1d) although it does not appear on the rolls themselves.The controlment rolls begin to survive in a broken series from 1329, but the first identified king's attorney, Lawrence del Brok, was appointed in 1247, so the earliest roll now surviving was probably not the first of its kind.
The contents of the rolls developed as time went on. By the early fifteenth century they began with a rotulus noting the issue of writs of inquiry into the chattels of persons recently oulawed, sometimes also followed by enrolments of recognisances for good behaviour. When the rolls reached their final form, they consisted of three sections for each term, an arrangement which existed in all its essentials by the reign of Henry VII.
