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A bailiff (French : bailli, French pronunciation: [baji] ) was the king's administrative representative during the ancien régime in northern France, where the bailiff was responsible for the application of justice and control of the administration and local finances in his bailiwick (baillage).
Bailli is first noted in the 12th century and comes the same word in Old French which means to govern or administer. [1] One 17th Century author credits the Old French word as meaning at the time "guardian" or "protector." [2] This word derives from the Vulgar Latin term bajulivus meaning "official in charge of a castle" (i.e., a royal castellan [ citation needed ] or "porter." [1]
In the late 12th and early 13th century, King Philip II, an able and ingenious administrator who founded the central institutions on which the French monarchy's system of power would be based, prepared the expansion of the royal demesne through his appointment of bailiffs in the king's northern lands (the domaine royal ), [3] based on medieval fiscal and tax divisions (the "baillie") which had been used by earlier sovereign princes such as the Duke of Normandy. In Flanders, the count appointed similar bailiffs (Dutch : baljuw). The equivalent agent in the king's southern lands acquired after the inheritance of the County of Toulouse was the seneschal.
Over time, the role of the baillages would be greatly extended as extensions of royal power, administration and justice. With the office of Great Seneschal vacant after 1191, the bailies became stationary and established themselves as powerful officials superior to provosts. A bailie's district included about half a dozen provostships. When appeals were instituted by the Crown, appeal of provost judgments, formerly impossible, now lay with the bailie. Moreover, in the 14th century, provosts no longer were in charge of collecting domainal revenues, except in farmed provostships, having instead yielded this responsibility to royal receivers (receveurs royaux). Raising local army contingents (ban and arrière-ban) also passed to bailies. Provosts therefore retained the sole function of inferior judges over vassals with original jurisdiction concurrent with bailies over claims against nobles and actions reserved for royal courts (cas royaux). This followed a precedent established in the chief feudal courts in the 13th and 14th centuries in which summary provostship suits were distinguished from solemn bailiary sessions.
Unlike the local administration of Norman England through sheriffs drawn from the great local families, the bailiff was a paid official sent out by the government, who had no power network in the area to which he had been assigned, and, in the way of a true bureaucrat, owed his income and social status wholly to the central administration that he represented. "He was therefore fanatically loyal to the king," Norman Cantor observes, "and was concerned only with the full exercise of royal power." [4] The cathedral schools and the University of Paris provided the clerks and lawyers who served as the king's bailiff.
Jersey – the largest of the Channel Islands – has been an island for around 6,000 years. Early inhabitation is evidenced by various neolithic monuments and hoards. In the 10th century, Jersey became part of Normandy. When the Normans conquered England in the 11th century, Jersey remained a part of the Duchy of Normandy, but when Normandy and England were finally split in the 13th century, the Channel Islands remained loyal to the English Crown, splitting Jersey politically from mainland Normandy.
The Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown dependency, unitary state and parliamentary representative democracy and constitutional monarchy. The head of the civil administration and judiciary is the Bailiff Timothy Le Cocq, while the Chief Minister Kristina Moore is the head of government. The current monarch and head of state is King Charles III.
A bailiff is a manager, overseer or custodian – a legal officer to whom some degree of authority or jurisdiction is given. Bailiffs are of various kinds and their offices and duties vary greatly.
The Count of Champagne was the ruler of the County of Champagne from 950 to 1316. Champagne evolved from the County of Troyes in the late eleventh century and Hugh I was the first to officially use the title count of Champagne.
The Kingdom of France in the Middle Ages was marked by the fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire and West Francia (843–987); the expansion of royal control by the House of Capet (987–1328), including their struggles with the virtually independent principalities, and the creation and extension of administrative/state control in the 13th century; and the rise of the House of Valois (1328–1589), including the protracted dynastic crisis against the House of Plantagenet and their Angevin Empire, culminating in the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), which laid the seeds for a more centralized and expanded state in the early modern period and the creation of a sense of French identity.
The title Bailiff of Guernsey has been used since at least the 13th century and indicated the leading citizen of Guernsey.
The Bailiff of Jersey is the civic head of the Bailiwick of Jersey. In this role, he is not the head of government nor the head of state, but the chief justice of Jersey and presiding officer of Jersey's parliament, the States Assembly. The Bailiff is also the President of the Royal Court. It is similar in role to the Bailiff of Guernsey.
A bailiwick is usually the area of jurisdiction of a bailiff, and once also applied to territories in which a privately appointed bailiff exercised the sheriff's functions under a royal or imperial writ.
Norman or Norman French is a Romance language which can be classified as one of the langues d'oïl, which also includes French, Picard and Walloon. The name "Norman French" is sometimes used to describe not only the Norman language, but also the administrative languages of Anglo-Norman and Law French used in England. For the most part, the written forms of Norman and modern French are mutually intelligible. This intelligibility was largely caused by the Norman language's planned adaptation to French orthography (writing).
There were six major officers of the kingdom of Jerusalem: the constable, the marshal, the seneschal, the chamberlain, the butler and the chancellor. At certain times there were also bailiffs, viscounts and castellans.
The word seneschal can have several different meanings, all of which reflect certain types of supervising or administering in a historic context. Most commonly, a seneschal was a senior position filled by a court appointment within a royal, ducal, or noble household during the Middle Ages and early Modern period – historically a steward or majordomo of a medieval great house. In a medieval royal household, a seneschal was in charge of domestic arrangements and the administration of servants, which, in the medieval period particularly, meant the seneschal might oversee hundreds of laborers, servants and their associated responsibilities, and have a great deal of power in the community, at a time when much of the local economy was often based on the wealth and responsibilities of such a household.
A bailie or baillie is a civic officer in the local government of Scotland. The position arose in the burghs, where bailies formerly held a post similar to that of an alderman or magistrate. Baillies appointed the high constables in Edinburgh, Leith and Perth. Modern bailies exist in Scottish local councils, with the position being a courtesy title and appointees often requested to provide support to the lord provost or provost - the ceremonial and civic head of the council - in their various engagements.
A prévôt was a governmental position of varying importance in Ancien Régime France, typically referring to a civil officer, magistrate, head of cathedral or church, often anglicised as provost. A unit of justice or court overseen by a prévôt was known as a prévôté.
The Ancien Régime, also known as the Old Regime, was the political and social system of the Kingdom of France from the Late Middle Ages until 1789 and the French Revolution, which abolished the feudal system of the French nobility (1790) and hereditary monarchy (1792). The Valois Dynasty ruled during the Ancien Régime up until 1589 and was subsequently replaced by the Bourbon dynasty. The term is occasionally used to refer to the similar feudal systems of the time elsewhere in Europe such as that of Switzerland.
Anglo-Norman, also known as Anglo-Norman French, was a dialect of Old Norman that was used in England and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in Great Britain and Ireland during the Anglo-Norman period.
The Courts of Guernsey are responsible for the administration of justice in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands. They apply the law of the Island, which is a mixture of customary law dating back as far as the 10th century and legislation passed by the legislature, the States of Deliberation.
The capitouls, sometimes anglicized as capitols, were the chief magistrates of the commune of Toulouse, France, during the late Middle Ages and early Modern period. Their council and rule was known as the Capitoulate. They were suppressed in 1789 amid the French Revolution.
Lieutenant-Général in France, was a title and rank across various military and security institutions with history dating back well beyond the 18th century. The official historic succession of the "Lieutenant-Général of France" corresponded to Général de division for the French Army, and Vice-Amiral (Vice-Admiral) for the French Navy.
The bailli, bailie, or bailiff was the administrative representative of the Princes of Achaea, ruling the Principality of Achaea in the Prince's absence. The early princes, who belonged to the founding Villehardouin dynasty, resided in the principality, and governed it directly. In 1278, Achaea passed to Charles of Anjou, the King of Naples. Charles, and many of his successors, ruled the principality through their baillis, and never visited it in person. Originally, the baillis were Angevin officials, but the post was often given to powerful feudatories from Achaea and the rest of Frankish Greece.
The Maréchaussée were corps of soldiers in the armies of France initially put in charge of military policing and justice in the Middle Ages, and later extended to civilian responsibilities. They gradually coalesced into a police force with jurisdiction over the entire population on almost the entire territory of France. They retained powers of extraordinary justice until the French Revolution.
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