The sheriff was originally elected by the freeholders or suitors of the great Court Baron of the county, commonly called the County Court; the bailiff by the freeholders of the hundred or manor, suitors to the Court Baron of each division[8]: and when the right of election in the former case was wrested from the people by the Norman tyrants[9], the same right in the latter case was usurped by the lord of the hundred or manor. The sheriff presided as judge in the folkmote or leet of the county, the bailiff in that of the hundred or manor. The former sat as principal executive officer of the County Court; the bailiff, of the Court Baron; the freeholders or suitors being the judges in each to this day: and though both seem to have been anciently considered as the Kings courts, yet offences were in one alledged to be _contra pacem ballivi_, and in the other _contra pacem vicecomitis_[10]. The fines and amerciaments imposed in these courts were levied, and the process of the court executed by the sheriff and bailiff in the same manner; each having his serjeants or inferior officers to assist him: and in the proceedings of the above courts, or others nearly similar, and held by or before the same persons, was comprehended the whole system, as well of the civil as of the criminal law of that age, not only before the institution of judges itinerant, but (in many cases at least) long after. The revenue of the crown was collected and accounted for by the sheriff and bailiff within their respective jurisdictions: And as each of them governed the tenants in peace, so he led them forth to war when necessity required[11]. Each of them had likewise his proper _aid_ or _scot_, which he assessed upon the landholders within his bailiwick, who frequently complained of it as an intolerable grievance, and as such it was at length abolished. The Kings writ is thought not to have run as it now does till about the institution of the Eyre or Iter of the Justices by K. _H. 2_.[12] How his commands were signified before this invention does not clearly appear[13]; but certainly after it took place, the execution of the writ (though necessarily directed to the sheriff) was as much the duty of the bailiff within the franchise, as of the sheriff without; nor could the latter, without a special authority, interfere in the most trivial matter which belonged to the other. In short, whatever the sheriff did or could do in the county at large the bailiff could do and did within his franchise, whether hundred[14] or manor. Such was the ancient constitution, and such in a great measure will appear from the following sheets to be the law at this day. [1] From =gerefen= _tollere_, _rapere_, _exigere_. _Exactor Regis (sc. mulctarum & jurium suorum). Ideo scil. quod mulctas regias et delinquentium facultates, in fiscum raperent, exigerent, deportarent._ Spelman, _voce_ REVE.