History of the Office of Sheriff
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| Slingsby Bethel Sheriff of London (1680) |
In the early days of England
families grouped together and were called Tuns (now known to us as
towns). During the next two centuries, changes were made to this existing
system and “tuns” became “shires”. The term “shire” is the forerunner of what we
now know in our modern day as a “county”.
Just as each hundred was led by a reeve (chief), each shire had a reeve as well.
To distinguish the leader of a shire from the leader of a mere hundred, the more
powerful official became known as the shire-reeve.
The word shire-reeve eventually became the modern word sheriff. The sheriff in
early England, and metaphorically, in present day America is the keeper, or
chief, of the county. Under King Alfred the Great, who assumed the throne in the
year 871, the sheriff was responsible for maintaining law and order within his
own county. However, it remained the duty of every citizen to assist the sheriff
in keeping the peace. If a criminal or escaped suspect was at large, it was the
sheriff's responsibility to give the alarm -- the hue and cry, as it was called.
Any member of the community who heard the hue and cry was then legally
responsible for helping to bring the criminal to justice. The principle of
direct citizen participation survives today in the procedure known as posse
commictus. Originally, tuns had ruled themselves through the election of
tithingmen and reeves. Over the years, however, government became more
centralized -- concentrated in the power of a single ruler, the king. The king
distributed huge tracks of land to various nobleman, who thereby became entitled
to govern those tracts of land under the king's authority. Under this new
arrangement, it was the nobleman who appointed sheriff's for the counties they
controlled. In those areas not consigned to noblemen, the king appointed his own
sheriff.
At the battle of Hastings in 1066, the Saxon King Harold was defeated by the
Normans, invaders from the country we now call France. The Normans, who did not
believe at all in local government, centralized their power. Rule was greatly
consolidated under the king and his appointees. More than ever before, the
sheriff became an agent of the king. Among the sheriff's new duties was that of
tax collector.
Nominations for High Sheriffs of Counties in England and Wales are made each
year in a Meeting of the Lords of the Council of the High Court of Justice
presided over by The Lord Chief Justice on November 12. Subsequently the final
selection is made in March by the Sovereign Privy Council, when the ‘picking’ of
each name is perpetuated.
The Warrant of Appointment is received by the new Sheriff from the Clerk of the
Privy Council, and since 1319 has been for one year. The High Sheriff takes up
the appointment upon making a sworn declaration usually before a Judge of Her
Majesty’s High Court of Justice.
The Office of High Sheriff has the longest continuous service and most ancient
office known to the Realm and the Crown. The High Sheriff was Chancellor, Home
secretary, Secretary of State for Defense, and Minister of Agriculture. There
were no police, no judges, not even magistrates, no Inland Revenue, no customs
and excise. The High Sheriff supervised everything on behalf of the King. In the
Ninth and Tenth Centuries, the role and importance of the Sheriffs had become
obvious. The whole constitutional, economical, judicial and administrative
development was dependent on the office of the High Sheriff.
Over the next few centuries, the sheriff remained the leading law enforcement
officer of the county. To be appointed sheriff was considered a significant
honor. The honor, however, was a costly one. If the people of the county did not
pay the full amount of their taxes and fines, the sheriff was required to make
up the difference out of his own pocket. Furthermore, the sheriff was expected
to serve as host for judges and other visiting dignitaries, providing them with
lavish entertainment at his own expense. For these reasons, the office of
sheriff was not often sought after. In fact many well qualified men did every
thing they could to avoid being chosen. The law on this point was quite clear,
if a man was chosen to be sheriff, he had to serve.
When English settlers began to travel to the New World, the office of sheriff
traveled with them. The first American counties were established in Virginia in
1634, and records show that one of these counties elected a sheriff in 1651.
Although this particular sheriff was chosen by popular vote, most other colonial
sheriff were appointed. Just as noblemen in medieval England had depended upon
sheriffs to protect their tracks of land, large American landowners appointed
sheriffs to enforce the law in the areas they controlled. Unlike their English
counterparts, however, American sheriffs were not expected to pay extraordinary
expenses out of their own pockets. Some sheriffs, most of whom were wealthy men
to begin with, even made money from the job. Throughout the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, American sheriffs were assigned a broad range of
responsibilities by colonial and state legislatures. Some of these
responsibilities, such as law enforcement and tax collection, were carried over
from the familiar role of English sheriff. Other responsibilities, such as
overseeing jails and work houses, were new.
Prior to signing the Magna Carta in 1214, the most common punishments for crimes
that did not warrant the death penalty had been flogging or other sorts of
physical mutilation. When confinement became favored as a more civilized way to
deal with criminals, authorities in medieval England introduced the county jail.
They began to experiment with other sorts of facilities as well. Among these
were the workhouse, where minor offenders were assigned useful labor, and the
house of correction, where people who had been unable to function in society
could theoretically be taught to do so. All three of these institutions were
brought to Colonial America, and the responsibility of managing them was given
to the colonies' ubiquitous law enforcement officer, the sheriff.
As Americans began to move westward, they took with them the concept of county
jails and the office of sheriff. The sheriff was desperately needed to establish
order in the territories. Here it is said that sheriffs fell into two
categories, the quick and the dead. Most western sheriffs, however, kept the
peace by virtue of their authority rather than their guns. With a few
exceptions, sheriffs resorted to firepower much less often than is commonly
imagined.
- from a variety of sources