Millar says, "The French monarchs, about this period, were not content with the power of receiving appeals from the several courts of their barons. An expedient was devised of sending royal _bailiffs_ into different parts of the kingdom, with a commission to take cognizance of all those causes in which the sovereign was interested, and in reality for the purpose of abridging and limiting the subordinate jurisdiction of the neighboring feudal superiors. By an edict of Phillip Augustus, in the year 1190, those _bailiffs_ were appointed in all the principal towns of the kingdom."--_Millar's Hist. View of the Eng. Gov._, vol. ii., ch. 3, p. 126. "BAILIFF-_office_.--Magistrates who formerly administered justice in the parliaments or courts of France, answering to the English sheriffs, as mentioned by Bracton."--_Bouvier's Law Dict._ "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_, &c.:) _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_,[97] 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._