Bailiff (Baillif, or Baillie French; Ballivus, Latin; from balliare to deliver, intrust, or commit,) is the name given by the Normans to those ministers of the law whom the Saxons called gerefa, greve or reve[1]: an appellation which, however corruptly, we still retain in the word sheriff, (scyre-gerefa, or shire-reve,) and by which the bailiff of a manor is in many parts of the kingdom known to this day. The sheriff himself did not, it is true, long continue to enjoy the title of bailiff, which gave place to the more honorable one of vicecomes or viscount (qui fungitur vice comitis,) by which name alone he was constantly stiled in all judicial proceedings, till the progressive ascendency of the English tongue restored to him his ancient and original appellation. His county, however, is still called his bailiwick[2], he is often mentioned in Magna Charta and ancient statutes along with alii ballivi, and is himself frequently included under that title[3]. Between this officer and the bailiff of a hundred, manor or liberty, such a perfect resemblance appears to have subsisted, in all respects, that there cannot be a doubt that both were the produce, if not of the same hand, at least, of the same system. The division of the kingdom into counties, hundreds and tithings, is well known to be owing to the wise policy of the great Ælfred[4]; each county, hundred or tithing is agreed to have been subjected to an officer known by the common name of the gerefa; he who presided over the county at large being usually, by way of distinction, called the heh or scyre-gerefa and sometimes the scyr-man, as the others were stiled the hundred and tything-gerefa or the hundreder, and tithingman[5]. We are but imperfectly acquainted with the duty of this officer till after the conquest. It is said, indeed, that the sheriff, in the time of the Saxons, was not the minister of the King, but the officer of the Ealderman or Eorl[6]. And what this alderman or earl was to the county, the lord or thain was, no doubt, to his manor or liberty, and what the sheriff was to the former, the inferior gerefa or bailiff was to the latter. Certain it is that not only the several courts of which we shall have occasion to speak, but what we now call manors or liberties, existed from a very early period, nor was it possible for the Norman Kings to enlarge, in favour of their own countrymen, the amazing powers which almost every petty Saxon thain or lord exercised in his jurisdiction, either from the nature of the constitution and ordinary course of law, or the liberal grants of the Saxon monarchs: powers which the Norman jurists never found themselves able to express in a different language[7].

The sheriff was originally elected by the freeholders or suitors of the great Court Baron of the county, commonly called the County Court; the bailiff by the freeholders of the hundred or manor, suitors to the Court Baron of each division[8]: and when the right of election in the former case was wrested from the people by the Norman tyrants[9], the same right in the latter case was usurped by the lord of the hundred or manor. The sheriff presided as judge in the folkmote or leet of the county, the bailiff in that of the hundred or manor. The former sat as principal executive officer of the County Court; the bailiff, of the Court Baron; the freeholders or suitors being the judges in each to this day: and though both seem to have been anciently considered as the Kings courts, yet offences were in one alledged to be contra pacem ballivi, and in the other contra pacem vicecomitis[10]. The fines and amerciaments imposed in these courts were levied, and the process of the court executed by the sheriff and bailiff in the same manner; each having his serjeants or inferior officers to assist him: and in the proceedings of the above courts, or others nearly similar, and held by or before the same persons, was comprehended the whole system, as well of the civil as of the criminal law of that age, not only before the institution of judges itinerant, but (in many cases at least) long after. The revenue of the crown was collected and accounted for by the sheriff and bailiff within their respective jurisdictions: And as each of them governed the tenants in peace, so he led them forth to war when necessity required[11]. Each of them had likewise his proper aid or scot, which he assessed upon the landholders within his bailiwick, who frequently complained of it as an intolerable grievance, and as such it was at length abolished. The Kings writ is thought not to have run as it now does till about the institution of the Eyre or Iter of the Justices by K. H. 2.[12] How his commands were signified before this invention does not clearly appear[13]; but certainly after it took place, the execution of the writ (though necessarily directed to the sheriff) was as much the duty of the bailiff within the franchise, as of the sheriff without; nor could the latter, without a special authority, interfere in the most trivial matter which belonged to the other. In short, whatever the sheriff did or could do in the county at large the bailiff could do and did within his franchise, whether hundred[14] or manor. Such was the ancient constitution, and such in a great measure will appear from the following sheets to be the law at this day.

THE
OFFICE
OF
BAILIFF OF A LIBERTY.