sheriffs
sheriffs. Reeves were Anglo-Saxon officials, and the king's reeves had special duties to keep order and collect royal dues. By the 11th cent. English kings put each shire under a scirgerefa (‘shire-reeve’, sheriff) who administered justice and collected revenues. Their powers and duties were greatly increased by the Normans, and they became notorious for high-handedness. Henry II was driven to hold an Inquest of Sheriffs into their activities, and to remove many from office (1170), but complaints of their maladministration long continued: the sheriff of Nottingham in the Robin Hood ballads represents the type. The crown's long-term solution was to spread the exercise of local administration and justice, especially, from the 14th cent., through justices of the peace; since the 16th cent. sheriffs have been largely county figureheads. In Scotland, where sheriffs were introduced in the 12th cent., they have been chief judges of sheriffdoms: and in those English towns taken out of county administration, sheriffs are elected urban officials responsible to the mayor. The sheriffs of American counties kept up, in the 19th cent., something of the role of earlier English sheriffs; and the ‘posse’ of the Wild West is the posse comitatus (force of the county) which medieval sheriffs could summon to pursue suspects and repress riots.
David M. Palliser
More From encyclopedia.com
County Government , COUNTY GOVERNMENT. County governments in the United States function as local administrative arms within the states. In the early 2000s the National A… County , COUNTY
A political subdivision of a state, the power and importance of which varies from one state to another.
A county is distinguishable from a cit… Bedfordshire , Bedfordshire is a small, low-lying, and predominantly agricultural county, drained largely by the river Ouse, which meanders across it from west to e… Buckinghamshire , Buckinghamshire has little geographical unity and seems to be an entirely artificial creation. The chalk hills of the Chilterns run across the middle… Dorset , Dorset is one of the oldest and most beautiful shires. But it has been so immortalized in the novels of Thomas Hardy that to many people it is better… Gloucestershire , Gloucestershire falls naturally into three parts: the eastern hills of Cotswold limestone from Winchcombe down to Bath, spilling towards Oxfordshire…
You Might Also Like
NEARBY TERMS
sheriffs