SHERIFFS
Sheriffs hold one of the oldest offices in English government. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that, when Viking ships arrived at Portland in 787, the ‘reeve’, that is, the Sheriff, ‘rode thither and tried to compel them to go to the royal manor, for he did not know what they were; and then they slew him’.1 Anglo-Saxon and Norman Sheriffs were the King’s bailiffs. They had charge of his castles and manors, oversaw defence, administered justice and collected the Crown’s dues. The office was of fundamental importance to constitutional development in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Norman Sheriffs have had a bad press. Their extortions are frequently recorded in Domesday Book. Picot, Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, was described by the Abbot of Ely as ‘a hungry lion, a ravening wolf, a cunning fox, a dirty pig and an impudent dog’. Their reputation under Norman and Angevin dynasties did not change. Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham were legendary, but the character of the latter showed what contemporaries thought of his office. In 1215, King John’s Magna Carta reluctantly promised that ‘We will appoint as justices, constables, Sheriffs, or other officials, only men that know the law of the realm and are minded to keep it well.’
Sheriffs were the prime arbiters of justice in the shires, although ecclesiastical causes were removed from their jurisdiction when ecclesiastical courts were created in 1072. Their powers were gradually whittled down, and subjected to fixed rules. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they were subordinated financially to the Exchequer, and judicially to the central courts; coroners (see Chapter 11) kept an eye on them. After 1258, they served for one year only. Many shrieval abuses recorded in the ‘ragman’ rolls (National Archives, series SC 5) were uncovered in 1275.2
Sheriffs continued to represent the Crown in their counties, and to undertake extensive routine activities; in 1323–4, the Sheriff of Bedfordshire dealt with at least 2,000 writs.3 But they ceased exercising substantial executive authority. Local landowners, rather than the nobility, increasingly held the office.
In the medieval period, the Sheriff’s ‘Tourn’ sat regularly in each Hundred. It dealt with petty matters such as encroachments on the highways, trading offences and bridges out of repair. It supervised the work of Hundred Courts, hearing presentments of serious assaults and robberies, and holding View of Frankpledge. The View aimed to ensure that every man was a member of a tithing. Tithings were groups of ten or twelve men, required to produce in court any of their members who committed an offence. The tourn provided the bulk of the work for Justices of gaol delivery at Assizes until 1461, when the hearing of indictments was removed to Quarter Sessions. Thus began the Tourn’s steady decline. By the seventeenth century, according to Dalton, the Tourn ‘is now almost grown out of use’.4
Sheriffs nevertheless remained the principal representatives of the Crown in the counties until the mid-sixteenth century, and the secular officers best placed to enforce the Reformation. When Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1533, the Sheriffs were instructed to ‘inform yourselves whether … the bishop executes our commands without veil or dissumulation’.5 Paradoxically, the instruction was the prelude to decreasing shrieval powers. It was followed by the dissolution of the monasteries, which drastically reduced the revenues Sheriffs were expected to collect.6 Duties relating to crown lands gradually passed to escheators, feodaries, and receivers. Shrieval military functions were lost to Commissioners of Musters, and subsequently Lord Lieutenants. At the end of the sixteenth century, William Harrison remarked that the shrievalty was reduced to dealing with ‘such small matters as oft arise amongst the inferior sort of people’.7
Shrieval powers did increase under Charles I. Sheriffs compiled lists of wealthy landowners who could be distrained for knighthood.8 Charles’s 1630 Book of Orders (see Chapter 5) gave Sheriffs a coordinating role over social and economic policy, and supervisory powers over Justices of the Peace. However, shrieval attempts to collect Ship Money only succeeded in rousing virulent opposition, leading eventually to civil war. The powers bestowed by the Book of Orders were immediately lost, never to be regained. Parliament, however, granted other new powers. Sheriffs were expected to assist County Committees (see Chapter 13) and the hated Excise Commissioners; they raised money for the relief of distressed Protestants in Ireland, ensured that tithes were paid to clergy imposed by Parliament, were involved with the pre-sale surveys of Crown and Episcopal lands, and even received writs from the patrons of livings for the institution of new clergy.9 These powers, too, were immediately lost on the Restoration of Charles II.
After 1660, Sheriffs continued undertaking much of the routine work of the courts, serving writs, empanelling juries, and executing judgements. Such work filled ninety pages in Dalton’s Officium Vicecomitum, the contemporary guide to their duties. The Sheriff attended both Quarter Sessions and Assizes (see Chapters 5 and 12), acting as their chief executive officer, arranging accommodation for the Assize judges, providing dinner for the Justices, presenting calendars of prisoners, empanelling juries, and gaoling, whipping or hanging convicted prisoners. Writs directed to the Sheriff ordered him to proclaim the Sessions, to summon officers and juries, to bring offenders and suspects to court. Sheriffs also proclaimed statutes and ordinances in their County Courts, empanelled juries for coroners and escheators,10 and continued to be able to call out the posse comitatus until the nineteenth century.
Sheriffs or their under-Sheriffs presided over county courts; the county’s freeholders owing suit (the duty was attached to ownership of specific property) acted as judges and jurors, and determined much important litigation. These courts’ long decline commenced in the thirteenth century, with cases increasingly being removed to superior courts. The prime evidence for their medieval activities is found in the records sent to those superior courts, and now in The National Archives. By the mid-fourteenth century, the central courts ‘had appropriated almost every jurisdiction of significance from the county courts’.11 By the sixteenth century, the latter were only hearing cases concerning the recovery of small debts. However, county courts continued to elect coroners (see Chapter 11) and Members of Parliament.
The Sheriff himself usually presided at Parliamentary elections, under a Chancery writ. County members were elected in his county court. Borough authorities presided over their own elections, although Sheriffs made returns of elections for them. Sheriffs were not supposed to stand themselves. They were frequently accused of returning members who had not been elected, of permitting unqualified persons to vote, and of closing polls prematurely whilst their friends were in the lead.
Between 1696 and 1872, Sheriffs compiled pollbooks recording the names and parishes of voters, sometimes their occupations, the nature of their qualification and their vote. The franchise in county constituencies was held after 1429 by freeholders who held land worth forty shillings per annum. Only those actually voting were recorded. Pollbooks survive in both print and manuscript. There is no consistency in the information they give, or in their arrangement. Voters may be listed alphabetically, by parish, or even by the order in which votes were cast. Occasionally, volumes were annotated; for example, a 1727 Bedfordshire pollbook records sales of property and deaths prior to the 1734 election.12 They ceased when the secret ballot was introduced in 1867.
Major collections of pollbooks are available at the Institute of Historical Research, Guildhall Library, the British Library, and the Society of Genealogists, as well as in local studies libraries and record offices. Many can be searched online search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=2410. Pollbooks are invaluable sources for political and social historians, and enable genealogists to trace the homes of family names across entire counties. Published lists of surviving pollbooks are noted below.
The judicial functions of County Courts were moribund by the eighteenth century. Courts of Request dealing with petty debt business replaced them in many boroughs. Debt business was taken over by new County Courts in 1846 (see Chapter 13); these were not, however, the old courts reformed. The latter were not formally abolished until 1977.
Technically, it continued to be the Sheriff’s duty to preserve the peace, although in practice most of his duties were exercised by Justices and the Lieutenancy by c.1600. Similarly, although he remained titular keeper of the county gaol, the Sheriff was rarely involved in its administration. Most shrieval duties were exercised by deputy. On appointment, the Sheriff himself appointed an under-Sheriff, a clerk for his court, and Hundred Bailiffs. They had frequently held office under his predecessor. Under-Sheriffs could exercise all shrieval functions, and frequently represented them on the Bench and at the Exchequer. Even in the thirteenth-century, Sheriffs usually had at least four clerks.13 Hundred Bailiffs executed writs, collected the Crown’s debts, and summoned juries.14 Attorneys were appointed to represent Sheriffs in the central courts.
These officers had plenty of opportunity for corruption. Tampering with jury lists, extorting fees from witnesses, and other nefarious practices were common. Bailiffs purchased their office from the Sheriff, and needed enough money to pay for it. The unreliability and dishonesty of Sheriffs’ officers was arguably ‘the chief weakness in English local government during the Stuart period’.15 At least one-third of early seventeenth-century Wiltshire bailiffs were the subject of complaints made to courts.16 Paradoxically, although the Sheriff’s tenure had been limited to one year in order to reduce shrieval corruption, in practice, annual office rendered nugatory any attempt by him to control the corruption of his subordinates. Sheriffs could nevertheless be held liable for their actions, and subjected to expensive litigation.
Sheriffs collected fines and amercements imposed by Quarter Sessions, Assizes and the Westminster courts. They also collected some taxes, and revenue from the Crown’s estates. Until 1788, monies received, after deduction of expenses such as the entertainment of Assize judges, the costs of poor prosecutors (from 1752), and rewards to informers, were paid into the Exchequer. Court officials compiled estreats (abstracts) of fines for the Exchequer, which in turn issued a ‘summons of the green wax’ to the Sheriff to collect and pay in the amounts due. Summonses are in The National Archives, series E 382.
Quarter Sessions estreats were written in duplicate and indented by the Clerk of the Peace, one copy for the Exchequer, the other for the Sheriff. They indicate the dates and places of sittings, list crown revenues, and name Clerks of the Peace and active Justices (thus providing one means of tracing these officers). Estreats sent to the Exchequer are now in The National Archives, series E 137 and E 362 (with a few in E 389). Those given to the Sheriff may sometimes be found amongst Quarter Sessions records, as well as in E 137.17 Estreats from many Westminster courts are also in E 137. Those prepared by Clerks of Assize are in E 362, and in various ASSI series. Many other National Archives series also include estreats.
At the end of his year of office, the Sheriff received a ‘summons of the Pipe’, to bring in his accounts. Some are in E 389. The pipe rolls (E 372), running from the twelfth century until 1832, record them. Many early rolls have been published by the Pipe Roll Society www.piperollsociety.co.uk. For brief introductions to their study, see:
• Crook, David. ‘Pipe rolls’, in Thompson, K.M., ed. Short Guides to Records Second Series 25-48. (Historical Association, 1997), pp.75–8.
• Medieval Financial Records: Pipe rolls, 1130–c.1300. www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/medieval-financial-records-pipe-rolls-1130-1300/
The procedure by which pipe rolls were drawn up is described in:
• Introduction to the Study of the Pipe Rolls. (Pipe Roll Society 3, 1884).
Medieval pipe rolls have been much studied. However, later rolls deserve more attention. Between 1581 and 1591, they record the fines and forfeitures inflicted on recusants. Early seventeenth century rolls list arrears of Ship Money.
A variety of other shrieval financial documents are in The National Archives, series E 389. These include accounts, returns of ‘illeviable debts’, vouchers relating to the cost of hangings, whippings, the pillory and other punishments, petitions for allowances, and various other documents. Other records (especially those of county courts) are not well preserved, although shrieval activities can be traced amongst the records of all the courts.
Assize judges, and later Lord Lieutenants, played important roles in identifying potential Sheriffs. The Lord Chancellor presented the King with a list of three possible candidates for each county;18 he, with a stylus, ceremoniously ‘pricked’ the ones he selected. Charles I sometimes chose malcontents in order to exclude them from the House of Commons. When he wanted Ship Money collected he chose men prepared to collect it. During the Interregnum, local Members of Parliament identified those eligible to serve, and appointment was made by ordinance of Parliament. In the 1680s, political turmoil led the Crown to make very careful choice of reliable Royalists.
Service if ‘pricked’ was compulsory. The office became an expensive honour; its holder had to be a gentleman of wealth. Quite apart from hospitality for Assize judges, dinners for Justices and the cost of expensive ceremonial, Sheriffs had to pay substantial fees to take up office, and to settle their accounts. It was not until 1717 that fees were regulated by statute, and that provision was made for Sheriffs to be reimbursed. Sir Richard Cholmley of Whitby is said to have spent £1,000 on his 1624 shrievalty, much of it on litigation.19 The holder of the office could neither leave the county, nor become a Member of Parliament, during his year of office. Sheriffs could not act as Justices (although many ignored this provision).
Attitudes to holding office varied: many were reluctant to take on the expense or the onerous duties. Some, however, seized the chance to enhance their own reputations, or to pursue their own interests. In Norfolk, bitter divisions within the gentry led to vigorous competition for office in the 1590s; it offered substantial opportunities to subvert court processes in factional interests.
The Sheriffs’ rolls pricked by the Crown are in The National Archives, series C 227, C 172, and PC 3. They are described in:
• Wilson, Jean S. ‘Sheriffs’ rolls of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, English Historical Review 47(185), 1932, pp.31–45.
Appointments of Sheriffs are recorded on the patent rolls (C66). On appointment, Sheriffs entered recognizances binding themselves to perform the duties of their office, under pain of a monetary penalty. Registers of recognizances from 1488 are in E 165. Names can also be found on the pipe rolls, and in many of the sources mentioned above. For a full list, see:
• List of Sheriffs for England and Wales from the earliest times to 1831, compiled from documents in the Public Record Office. Lists and indexes 9. (HMSO, 1896).
For Norman Sheriffs, see:
• Green, Judith A. English Sheriffs to 1154. Public Record Office handbook 24. (HMSO, 1990).
More recent appointees are listed in the London Gazette, www.thegazette.co.uk/browse-publications. Numerous county lists of Sheriffs have been published; many are also available online. Appointments of under-Sheriffs are recorded in The National Archives, series E 389.
FURTHER READING
Sheriffs are introduced in:
• Gladwin, Irene. The Sheriff: the Man and his Office. (Victor Gollancz, 1974).
There are a number of works covering particular periods. These include:
• Morris, William A. The Medieval English Sheriff to 1300. (Manchester University Press, 1927).
• Gorski, Richard. The Fourteenth-Century Sheriff: English Local Administration in the Late Middle Ages. (Boydell Press, 2003).
• Karraker, C.H. The Seventeenth-Century Sheriff: a Comparative Study of the Sheriff in England and the Chesapeake Colonies, 1607-1689. (University of North Carolina Press, 1930).
Contemporary legal handbooks include:
• Dalton, Michael. Officium Vicecomitum: the office and authority of Sheriffs. (Richard & Edward Atkins, 1582).
• Hale, Matthew. A Short Treatise touching Sheriffs’ Accompts. (Will Shrowsbury, 1683).
• Atkinson, George. Sherriff Law, or, a practical treatise on the office of Sheriff, unde-Sheriff, bailiff, etc. (3rd ed. Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1854).
On the county court, see:
• Morris, William Alfred. The Early English County Court: an Historical Treatise with Illustrative Documents. (University of California Press, 1926).
• Palmer, Robert C. The County Courts of Medieval England, 1150-1350. (Princeton University Press, 1982).
Pollbooks are listed by:
• Gibson, Jeremy, & Rogers, Colin. Poll Books, 1696-1872: a directory to holdings in Great Britain. (4th ed. Family History Partnership, 2008).
• Sims, J. A Handlist of British Parliamentary Poll Books. (University of Leicester History Dept occasional paper 4, 1984).
Published local records used here include:
Bedfordshire
• Fowler, G. Herbert, ed. Rolls from the Office of the Sheriff of Beds and Bucks., 1332-1334. (Quarto Memoirs of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 3, 1929).
• Collett-White, James, ed. How Bedfordshire Voted, 1685-1735: the evidence of local poll books. (Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 85 & 87, 2006–8. Continued for 1735–84 in vol. 90, 2011).
Buckinghamshire see Bedfordshire.
Lancashire
• Ffarington, Susan Maria, ed. The Farington Papers: the Shrievalty of William Ffarington, esq., A.D. 1636…. (Chetham Society old series 39, 1856).
Nottinghamshire
• Poll-Books of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, 1710. (Thoroton Society record series 18, 1958).