 Thank you for that. So good morning everybody or good evening over here in China. Today I'm going to be talking about the office of sheriff in the Trude period from 1485 to 1603. So here on the on the first slide you can see a very striking you can see a very striking picture of of a sheriff from the this is a this is a 19th century imagining of what a what a sheriff would have looked like in the 15th century. I think there's a certain degree of artistic license because he looks a little bit like William Shakespeare but the key the key feature is the white staff. So the white staff was the was the symbol of the sheriff's office. Obviously gave the sheriff an aspect of majesty and aura of being the king's officer. Also it was used for technical reasons so if he if he needed to summon someone in the legal action for land he would erect the white staff or a white staff on the on the landing question as a way of as a way of summoning a tenant court. So yeah would you mind changing the next slide please? Thank you. So as many of you probably already know the the sheriff was introduced into England by the Anglo-Saxons. So the original word was skier griefer. Apologies if there are any Anglo-Saxonists in here and I'm pronouncing that not quite right but that literally meant Shire Reeve and the the first clear documentary evidence of his existence in England is from the reign of Edgar in the in the 10th century. And after after the Norman conquest sheriffs became the most important royal officers in each county. By the end of the 14th century however the sheriff had lost most of his independent executive authority so that's that's really crucial. So often the sheriffs are called kings of their counties. So by the by the Tudor period the sheriffs are no longer kings of their counties. They are descendants of the 14th century sheriffs. So the 14th century was when really important legislation was introduced to to limit to limit the well limit the responsibilities of sheriffs and also limit their capacity for for independent action. That's often encapsulated in the phrase the decline of the sheriff. Something I argue about in the book is that there wasn't really a decline of the sheriff. There was a decline in the sheriff's independence but not a decline in the sheriff's importance. The sheriff remained important throughout the the period. Thank you can you change the next slide. So I'm talking about the Tudor period but I'm aware there are many medievalists in here so I wanted to recommend a couple of books. So in 1927 William Alfred Morris published an excellent book called The Medieval English Sheriff to 1300 and that was published by Manchester University Press. And it really is a fine book. It's it's the pro style is wonderful and and it's in it's sweeping range. It really hasn't been really hasn't been superseded since then. Of course 1927 is quite a long time ago. So scholars have have discovered new things and and adapted some of Morris's conclusions but as a as a general overview to the sheriff to the shrievorty in that period it's it's excellent. Another another interesting book is Richard Gorski's monograph published in 2003 the 14th century sheriff English local administration in the late middle ages. So I'm sure many of you have already read that actually. In my opinion it's not quite as wide wide-ranging or well I'll just say that it's not as wide-ranging as as W.A Morris's book but it's it turns his attention to some things which weren't considered by Morris for example the social status of sheriffs the age the age of which men were appointed and so on. So both together are useful. And can you change the next slide please. So some fundamentals about the office of sheriff in our period. Every high sheriff ruled over a sheriff wick or bailiwick and this was normally one or two counties. Some important towns were known as counties corporate and had their own municipal sheriffs either one or two. And it's important to bear in mind that the jurisdictions of high and municipal sheriffs were strictly separate. So a sheriff of York couldn't arrest someone in Beverly Yorkshire and a sheriff of Yorkshire couldn't arrest someone in the city of York. Which is strange because the sheriff of Yorkshire actually his base was the was a castle of York which is in the city within the city was so but he couldn't arrest people in the city itself. By the end of the Elizabethan period much shriever work was conducted by under sheriffs. So under sheriffs the deputies of sheriffs are really important as well. It varies by sheriff and by county. So some sheriffs delegated basically everything to the under sheriff whereas other sheriffs prefer to keep a tighter grip on shriever business themselves. So it's hard to generalize but I think it's fair to say that the importance of under sheriffs increased over this period. And you can change the next slide please. So how many high sheriffs were there in England? So just to reiterate high sheriffs were the sheriffs of counties as opposed to the as opposed to municipal sheriffs. Well before the before the start of our period there were 29 as you can see in the orange table at the bottom. I hope it's orange. If it's not I apologize I'm colorblind but I think it's I think I remember it being orange. So between 1567 and 1575 Queen Elizabeth the first council organized the partition of eight joint sheriff wicks. So so traditionally you had like Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire which were administered together under one sheriff but but many of these were partitioned in the in the 1560s and 1570s. One of them Surrey and Sussex was partitioned but then joined together again in 1571. So why why why were these partitioned? The most important reason was that there was a great a great rise in in litigation at Westminster and also in borough courts and local courts actually in the 16th century. It's been it's been widely charted in the you know the petty foggers and vipers of the Commonwealths and so we know we've known for a long time that litigation rose in the 16th century. So this was the main reason why a sheriff a sheriff of two counties simply didn't have enough time to execute all of the legal rits which he which he needed to do if there were if there were more lawsuits nationwide and could have the next slide please. So how were sheriffs appointed? New sheriffs were appointed every year. So on the on the third of there was quite a procedure for this. So on the third of November leading officials met with the Justices of the Superior Courts in Exchequer Chamber a very large room to nominate three candidates for each sheriff and this meeting produced a shortlist or a sheriff role which was sent to the king and he pricked his final selection with a needle or bodkin. There was a there's a story that this tradition of pricking started with Elizabeth because one day someone brought her the sheriff role to sign or to dot with an ink make an ink dot with a pen but she didn't have a pen so she used she'd been sewing doing some needle work and she used the needle in her hand instead of instead of a pen but actually it was it's nice it's a nice story but it's not true because pricking started in the reign of Henry VIII so unless Henry VIII had a pension for needle work then that's then the story is the story falls flat. The pricked role and the procedure to chance her in so the the justices and councillors made a shortlist the king chose the final selection then it then the the pricked role went to Chancery and the Chancery would then issue the sheriff's patents normally in mid to late November. So this is like the bureaucratic procedure on the surface but of course underneath this formal procedure there was lots of informal lobbying so I put some stories in the book of people writing to councillors and saying I'll give you a nice hawk if you if you if you have this man or don't have this man as as sheriff so under the veneer of the procedure there was all sorts of this lobbying and court injury going on. Oh I forgot this could I have the next slide I was thinking I had control of it so what was the what was the social status of sheriffs? High sheriffs were drawn from the landed gentry the same broad social group that provided justices of the peace and many were legally trained so in a PhD thesis of 1970 Terence E. Hartley estimated that around 60 percent of Elizabethan sheriffs had been to the ends of court and sheriffs the sherivity was one of many hats worn at the same time so sheriffs could serve simultaneously as as cheaters subsidy collectors and so on until 1553 sheriffs could even serve as justices of the justices of the peace at the same time but the parliament of Mary the first stopped that from well made that illegal to hope to be a justice of the peace and a sheriff at the same time and could I have the next slide please? So what did the what was this what did the sheriff have to do? He was a generalist officer memorably described in 1943 1944 by Helen Kahn as the kings made of all the work in the regions his duties included executing the king's writ holding local courts managing county and municipal prisons arresting suspected felons hanging convicted felons and traitors collecting and accounting for royal revenue seizing forfeited property mustering soldiers making proclamation and holding parliamentary elections and funnily enough Tudor historians have mainly focused on the last of these holding parliamentary elections obviously driven by the importance and the the importance of and interest in parliamentary history but actually most parliamentary seats were not were not contested in the in the Tudor period so actually parliamentary elections were quite rare or contested elections were quite rare so so so I think it's important to see the shrieval office in its entirety rather than just zooming in on this one this one thing and put it pretty much changing the next slide please so I I'm aware I'm running out of time so I there's not there's not enough time to talk about all of the all of those duties listed above so I thought I would just talk briefly about some of some of them so starting with one of the sheriff's courts so the sheriff was responsible for holding the high sheriff's were responsible for holding two courts the county court and the sheriff's turn and this turn this court was called a turn because well it well first I should say it was held in each hundred of the of the sheriff's bailiwick which was not held by a private farmer and the name supposedly referred to the fact that the sheriff had to turn or perambulate his county so it's called a turn because he's turning around the county the turn was it it could be considered to be a commonwealth court so it was designed to inquire into trespassers and felonies considered to be harmful to the commonwealth many turns were held outdoors and in uh so what do I mean when I say commonwealth matters so in in 1538 to Anthony Fitzherbert the justice published a list of what things be inquirable in the sheriff's turn and inquirable matters ranged from affray and arson to the alteration of boundaries highways and water courses so um so anything from from like crime to to newtons came came within the remit of the sheriff's turn and could I have the next slide please sorry I'm I'm racing through this a little bit because I want to get as much I get through as much as possible so so every male over 12 dwelling in each hundred was bound to attend unless he owed suit to elite or was a tenant in ancient demean and this suit to the turn was called suit right the court operated by a process called double presentment so officers called tithing men or decanadi I would make original presentments or allegations while a jury would make final presentments and if anyone's interested in that then it was first explained I believe by the great legal historian F. W. Maitland there were at least 177 turns still operative in the Truda period excluding municipal turns and I say at least um there's almost certainly many many more than that so so that that um that this proves a common idea that the sheriff's turn was kind of defunct in the in the Truda period could I have the next one please so this is a this is a front cover of a of a court book of the sheriff's turn in in Derbyshire so this is it's from slightly after our our period so 1606 but it was it was too good to leave out so I had to I had to use it even though it's three years too late so this is in the as I as I as I might have already mentioned it was in the Derbyshire record office in Matlock which is incidentally one of the most beautiful beautifully located record offices in the in the whole country and the next slide please so I won't talk too much about this this is the list of free holders who held who owed suit to the court if anyone's interested in chance repetitions it's bound it's in the binding there's like a draft chance repetition which has been like stitched to make a cover for the book and I didn't I didn't um I didn't say anything about that because um it was kind of peripheral to my project so if anyone wants to have a look at that that might be uh interesting for them um okay could I have the next slide please okay so this so these these things are really formulaic so you can see it there in the margin hundred-day moorlestone at lit church in Cometatou Derby Derbyshire so this is the county of Derby and at the top it says Turner Turnus so this is the Latin word for turn and it says it's held by the like Sir John Harper the sheriff of the fourth of the said county and that gives the dates and uh says that it was held by Anthony Bradshaw as a as a gentleman as a who's acting as steward of the court so then it gives the people who essaying you can see it's as essaying in the left and then and then uh it records that the constable the constable of Fendham was sworn and then the the the free pledges or decanarii was sworn and uh at the bottom I don't know if you can make it out just at the bottom though it's somebody's being immersed 10 shillings for not putting away his uh or several people have been put away for not are being immersed for not putting away their geese and ducks so that gives you a it gives you a sense of the um the sort of offenses which came came under the purview of this court and could I have the next one please so this uh some more typical offenses here so this is a guy called William William Foster sorry who who broke the common pound and he was the most three shillings four pence and and then another guy also broke the common park then you've got uh William Robinson who well for for illegal rescue so he was immersed 12 pence so these are the kind of these are the kind of things you see on on turn and and and also lead records actually and uh could I have the next next one please so uh I won't go on for much longer so just briefly the sheriff's second court the county court this was administered every four weeks and the court welcomed civil pleas under the value of 40 shillings it was interesting uh Samuel Samuel mentioned the the uh the county court under in the reign of Edward III but when it was of much greater political and legal importance so in my period the county court was was less politically important and also the the litigation had become more trivial because the the 40 shillings cap had been set like centuries before but of course with the great Tudor inflation the value of 40 shillings drastically declined so so 40 shillings was worth a lot more at the end of my period than it was at the start of it uh so the the typical county court would hear around 30 pleas every year and Knights of the Shire were elected at the county court as I mentioned um and I already said that the uh the majority of parliamentary seats were uncontested um could you could have the next one please maybe then maybe the next one as well uh I'm okay I'll briefly go through this uh so interesting Elizabeth was talking about the receipt rolls and the evidence for Ireland which was which I thought was fascinating I didn't know about that um so through an hour period the sheriff also accounted at the exchequer uh he he collected small traditional revenues for the king centuries before there had been huge revenues but well with the combined effects of inflation and the uh diminution of royal lands these they weren't very significant sums in the grand scheme of things anymore so the two main sums were the Corpus Cometatus the the farm of the county which was notionally consisted of rents payable by tenants of royal custody lands and the second one was the Prophet Cometatus profits of the county notionally again consisting of profits from the sheriff's courts and uh I say notionally because anyone who's looked at these records realizes that uh there's not they're not always there's not what you can't always find a rational scheme behind some of these things but um anyway the sheriff also collected greenwork stats finds emersements and finds and emersements issued by other courts and forfeited recognizances so so according to figures compiled in 1602 payments by sheriffs accounted for only 3.5 percent of the total ordinary revenue received by the exchequer each year so that really puts in stark um well it really uh it starkly illustrates the uh the fact that these revenues are not very important one of my one of my theories is that that they were retained to keep the sheriff in his place because the making the sheriff account for these these revenues was a tried and tested way of securing his deference as a royal agent so that's that that's one of my theories as to why these weren't abolished although in the book I do talk about the the reform of this system in the in the later reign of Henry VIII and in the reign of Edward VI in order to try and alleviate the sheriff's burden somewhat okay can I have the next slide please uh so finally um a shameless plug for my book this is the this is the this is the book on which this presentation is based um I think OUP did a really great job of the cover so I'm so I'm really pleased with how that turned out and that should be it should be coming out in January 2022 but I think I annoyed the I think I annoyed the uh the editorial team because I kept think I kept changing I kept wanting to change certain phrases at the last minute so it might might be slightly delayed but um sooner or later it will be out so if you're interested then please do please do have a look and it would be nice to hear what you think of it so thank you very much everybody