"There be several officers called bailiffs, whose offices and employments seem quite different from each other... The chief magistrate, in divers ancient corporations, are called bailiffs, as in Ipswich, Yarmouth, Colchester, &c;. There are, likewise, officers of the forest, who are termed bailiffs." 1 Bacon's Abridgment, 498 9. " BAILIFF signifies a keeper or superintendent, and is directly derived from the French word bailli, which appears to come from the word balivus, and that from bagalus, a Latin word signifying generally a governor, tutor, or superintendent... The French word bailli is thus explained by Richelet, (Dictionaire, &e;.:) Bailli. He who in a province has the superintendence of justice, who is the ordinary judge of the nobles, who is their head for the ban and arriere ban, [9] and who maintains the right and property of others against those who attack them... All the various officers who are called by this name, though differing as to the nature of their employments, seem to have some kind of superintendence intrusted to them by their superior." Political Dictionary. " BAILIFF, balivus. From the French word bayliff, that is, praefectus provinciae, and as the name, so the office itself was answerable to that of France, where there were eight parliaments, which were high courts from whence there lay no appeal, and within the precincts of the several parts of that kingdom which belonged to each parliament, there were several provinces to which justice was administered by certain officers called bailiffs; and in England we have several counties in which justice hath been, and still is, in small suits, administered to the inhabitants by the officer whom we now call sheriff, or viscount; (one of which names descends from the Saxons, the other from the Normans.) And, though the sheriff is not called bailiff, yet it was probable that was one of his names also, because the county is often called balliva; as in the return of a writ, where the person is not arrested, the sheriff saith, infra-nominatus, A. B. non est inventus in balliva mea, &c;.; (the within named A. B. is not found in my bailiwick, &c;.) And in the statute of Magna Carta, ch. 28, and 14 Ed. 8, ch. 9, the word bailiff seems to comprise as well sheriffs, as bailiffs of hundreds. BAILIES, in Scotland, are magistrates of burghs, possessed of certain jurisdictions, having the same power within their territory as sheriffs in the county.