Bailiff and Bailie

BAILIFF AND BAILIE, a legal officer to whom some degree of authority, care or jurisdiction is committed.

The term was first applied in England to the King's officers generally, such as sheriffs, mayors, etc., and more particularly to the chief officer of a hundred. The county within which the sheriff exercises his jurisdiction is still called his bailiwick, while the term bailiff is retained as a title by the chief magistrates of various towns and the keepers of royal castles, as the high bailiff of Westminster, the bailiff of Dover Castle, etc. Under the manorial system, the bailiff, the steward and the reeve were im portant officers ; the bailiff managed the property of the manor and superintended its cultivation (see Walter of Henley, Hus bandry, R. Hist. Soc. 1890).

The bailiff of a franchise or liberty is the officer who executes writs and processes, and impanels juries within the franchise. He is appointed by the lord of such franchise (who, in the Sheriffs Act 1887, § 34, is referred to as the bailiff of the franchise) .

The bailiff of a sheriff is an under-officer employed by a sheriff within a county for the purpose of executing writs, processes, distraints and arrests. Special bailiffs are officers appointed by the sheriff at the request of a plaintiff for the purpose of executing a particular process. The appointment of a special bailiff relieves the sheriff from all responsibility until the party is arrested and delivered into the sheriff's actual custody.

By the County Courts Act 1888 provision is made for the ap pointment of one or more high-bailiffs by the judge; and is em powered to appoint a sufficient number of able and fit persons as bailiffs to assist him, whom he can dismiss at his pleasure and for whom he is responsible. The duty of the high-bailiff is to serve all summonses and orders, and execute all the warrants, precepts and writs issued out of the court. The Law of Distress Amendment Act 1888 enacts that no person may act as a bailiff to levy any distress for rent, unless he is authorized by a county court judge to act as a bailiff.

In the Channel Islands the bailiff is the first civil officer in each island. He is appointed by the Crown, and generally holds office for life. He presides at the royal court, and takes the opinions of the jurats; he also presides over the states, and represents the Crown in all civil matters.

Bailie.

In Scotland the word bailiff denotes an inferior officer locally appointed to watch and ward; e.g., a water-bailiff. In the form "bailie" the word signifies an official appointed to exercise a local delegated jurisdiction, civil or criminal. The feudal bailies, formerly appointed by the superiors of regality or of barony lands to exercise jurisdiction within these lands have disappeared in consequence of the abolition of feudal jurisdictions. The municipal bailies still subsist and are now elected from among the members of town councils, and each holds office from the date of such election until he fails to retire from the council in ordinary rotation. (Town Council [Scotland] Act 'goo, 55, 56 and 57.) They are, along with the provost, the magistrates of the burgh and are invested with certain judicial and administrative powers within the burgh for which they are elected. They sit as police court magistrates, being assisted usually by a paid legal adviser, called an "assessor," and, in the larger burghs, act as a licensing court.

Bailli..

In France the bailiff (bailli), or seneschal in feudal days, was the principal officer of any noble importance. He it was who held the feudal court of assizes when the lord was not present himself. A great noble often also had a prevote, where small matters were settled, and the preparatory steps taken relative to the more important cases reserved for the assizes. Among the great officers of the Crown of France a grand-seneschal formerly figured until the reign of Philip Augustus, when the last holder of the office was not replaced by a successor. It is also under Philip Augustus that local bailiffs first make a definite appearance. In the ordinance of 119o, by which the king, about to set forth on the crusade, arranged for the administration of the kingdom during his absence, they figure as part of a general system. Their essential function was at first the surveillance of the royal provosts (prevots), who until then had had the sole administration of the various parts of the domain. They con centrated in their own hands the produce of the provostships, and they organized and led the men who by feudal rules owed military service to the king. They had also judicial functions, which, at first narrowly restricted in application, became much enlarged as time went on, and they held periodical assizes in the principal centres of their districts. When the right of appeal was instituted, it was they who heard the appeals from sentences pronounced by inferior royal judges and by the seigniorial justices. Royal cases, and cases in which a noble was defendant, were also reserved for them. The royal bailli or seneschal (no real difference existed between the two offices, the names merely changing according to the district), was for long the king's principal representative in the provinces, and the bailliage or the senechaussee was then as important administratively as judicially. But the political power of the bailiffs was greatly lessened when the provincial governors were created. They had already lost their financial powers, and their judicial functions now passed from them to their lieutenants.

By his origin the bailiff had a military character; he was an officer of the "short robe" and not of the "long robe," which in those days was no obstacle to his being well versed in precedents.

But when, under the influence of Roman and canon law, the legal procedure of the civil courts became learned, the bailiff often availed himself of a right granted him by ancient public law; that of delegating the exercise of his functions to whomsoever he thought fit. But as this delegation became habitual, the position of the lieutenants was strengthened; in the 16th century they became royal officers by title, and even dispossessed the bailiffs of their judiciary prerogatives. The tribunal of the bailliage or senechaussee underwent yet another transformation, becoming a stationary court of justice, the seat of which was fixed at the chief town. During the 15th and i6th centuries ambulatory assizes diminished in both frequency and importance. In the 17th and i8th centuries they were no more than a survival, the lieutenant of such a bailliage having preserved the right to hold one assize each year at a certain locality in his district. The ancient bailiff or bailli d'epee still existed, however ; the judgments in the tribunal of the bailliage were delivered in his name, and he was responsible for their execution. So long as the military service of the ban and arriere ban, due to the king from all fief holders, was maintained (and it was still in force at the end of the 17th century), it was the bailiffs who organized it. Finally the bailliage became in principle the electoral district for the states general, the unit represented therein by its three estates. The justiciary nobles retained their judges, often called bailiffs, until the Revolution. These judges, who were competent to decide questions as to the payment of seigniorial dues, could not, legally at all events, themselves farm those revenues.

See Dupont Ferrier, Les Officiers royaux des bailliages et sinichaus sees et les institutions monarchiques locales en France a la fin du moyen age (1002); Armand Brette, Recueil de documents relatifs a la convocation des etats-generaux de 1789 (1904) (vol. iii. gives the condition of the bailliages and senechaussees in 1789) .

(J. P. E.; W. A. B.)