BAILIFF, in English law, is a legal officer, and may be described as the keeper, pro tector, or superintendent of some duty or charge legally imposed on him. As officers of the law. bailiffs put in force arresting process, and they perform other duties within the co. or bailiwick required of them by the sheriff, who is their immediate official supe rior. In this sense bailiffs are either bailiffs of hundreds, or bound bailiffs. The duty of the former is to collect fines, summon juries, attend the judges and justices at the assizes and quarter sessions, and execute writs and process s in the several hundreds. Bound bailiffs, again, are officers usually joined by the sheriffs with the bailiffs of hundreds, and employed on account of their adroitness and dexterity. They are called bound bailiffs, because the sheriff, being civilly responsible for their official misdemeanors, they are annually bound in an obligation, with sureties, for the due execution of their office. There are also special bailiffs, who are officers appointed by the sheriff on the application of the party suing out the process to be executed; and whenever a party thus chooses his own officers, he is considered to discharge the sheriff from all responsibility for what is done by him. There is, besides, another exceptional class of bailiffs, called bailiffs of
liberties, honors, manors, and other lordships and franchises. whose appointments, duties, and responsibilities are regulated by the 7 Vict. c. 19. The co. courts likewise have bailiffs for the execution of their process, as to whom see 9 and 10 Vict. c. 95, 12 and 13 Viet. c 101, 13 and 14 Vict. c. 61, and 19 and 20 Vict. c. 108.
The sheriff himself is the Queen's B., and, as such, it is his business to preserve the rights of the crown within his bailiwick. He must seize to the sovereign's use all lands devolved to the crown by attainder or escheat; must levy all fines and forfeitures; and must seize and keep all waifs (q. v.), wrecks, estrays, and the like, unless they be granted to some subject.