Sheriff (A.S. scír-geréfa, the reeve or fiscal-officer of a shire), in English law, is an officer whose duties are chiefly ministerial (for he has only a few trifling judicial duties). The office is of great antiquity. The sheriff was (next to the ealdorman or earl, and the bishop) the chief man of the shire, and seems to have possessed unlimited jurisdiction to keep the peace; to have presided in the courts of the shire; to have punished all crimes, and have redressed all civil wrongs. The sheriff was formerly chosen by the inhabitants, though probably requiring confirmation by the crown. But popular elections for that purpose were put an end to by a statute of 9 Ed. II., which enacted that in future the sheriffs should be assigned by the chancellor, treasurer, and judges. Ever since that statute the custom has been, and now is, for the judges, the Lord Chancellor, and Chancellor of the Exchequer to meet in the Court of Exchequer (now the King's or Queen's Division) on the morrow of St Martin (12th November), and there propose three persons for each county to the crown. On the morrow of the Purification (3d February) the names are finally determined on, the first on the list being generally chosen; and the sovereign afterwards 'pricks off' the person selected, by piercing the list with a punch opposite his name, and so appoints him to the office. A sheriff continues in office for one year only, and cannot be compelled to serve a second time. The office is not only gratuitous, but compulsory, for if the person appointed refuses he is liable to be fined. In practice, country gentlemen of wealth are appointed. As military head of the county the sheriff was superseded by the Lord-lieutenant (q.v.) as early as the reign of Henry VIII. In the city of London the sheriffs are appointed not by the crown, but by the citizens. The sheriff has important official duties in elections of members of parliament. He is, by his office, the first man in the county, and superior to any nobleman while he holds office. He has the duty of summoning the posse comitatus—i.e. all the people of the county—to assist him in the keeping of the peace; and if any person above the age of fifteen, and under the degree of a peer, refuse to attend the sheriff after due warning, he incurs a fine or imprisonment. The chief legal duty which the sheriff discharges is that of executing—i.e. carrying out—all the judgments and orders of the courts of law. It is he who seizes the goods of debtors or their persons, and puts them in prison. For this purpose he has a number of persons called bound-bailiffs (or, in popular dialect, bumbailiffs), who in practice do this invidious work, and give a bond to the sheriff to protect him against any mistake or irregularity on their part. The necessity of this bond is obvious, for the doctrine of law is that the sheriff is personally responsible for every mistake or excess made or committed by the bailiffs in executing the writs or process of the court; actions may be brought against him by indignant prisoners, or debtors whose persons or goods have been arrested; and the courts watch jealously the least infringement of personal rights caused by these bailiffs. Every sheriff ('high-sheriff') has an under-sheriff, usually a solicitor, who takes charge of the legal business; and he is required to name a deputy in London to whom writs may be delivered. See works by Churchill and Bruce (1879) and Atkinson (new ed. by Melsheimer, 1878).
The sheriff's extensive jurisdiction, gradually acquired at the cost of local courts, has been gradually infringed upon, partly by the exercise of the royal prerogative, and partly by parliament. But in England it suffered more from the appointment to the office of men not specially qualified to exercise judicial powers, and from the consequent usurpation of their functions by the supreme courts. The same causes operated in Scotland, though to a less extent. In England they resulted in the almost entire abolition of the judicial functions of the sheriff. In Scotland they resulted in his being deprived of the more important parts of the criminal jurisdiction, particularly of the power to punish by death, and in his civil jurisdiction being limited mainly to questions affecting movables. In both countries the office was entrusted to gentlemen having estates in the county; in some cases it was hereditary; these arrangements tended to a separation of the duties of the office into the honorary and the laborious—the former being performed by the sheriff, and the latter by his deputy. In Scotland this separation was completed by the act of Geo. II., which entirely separated the offices by the transference of the power of appointing the deputy from the principal sheriff to the crown. In England this complete separation has never become necessary, from the fact of the sheriff's power having been much more crippled than in Scotland. Indeed, in England, so purely honorary and ministerial has the office become, that it has been held by a female, and in Westmorland the office was hereditary down to 1849. The duty of enforcing the orders of the supreme courts, which now in England is a principal part of the duties of the sheriff, appears to have been engrafted on the office—probably on the theory that these orders were those of the king himself. In Scotland the sheriff has never been called on to enforce any writs except those actually and not merely in name proceeding at the instance of the crown.