Bailiwick

Under the term bailiwick was comprised any office, jurisdiction or territory committed to the care of a subordinate ofiicial; a County intrusted to a Sheriff was termed his bailiwick ; the jurisdiction over which the authority of an Escheator ran was spoken of as the bailiwick in his charge.

Geoffrey Peilevilain belonged to a local family, and held his fief permanently as a demesne servant of the king; his function was permanent. Geoffrey Peilevilain performed a duty rather than enjoyed a right in the Avranchin. The ducal rights in the Avranchin at the end of the twelfth century includes some data which had been investigated before 1180. The viscounty of the Avranchin was, as the document published by M. Delisle reminds us, in the hands of the earl of Chester, who paid a net farm of 60 pounds a year. The bailiwick of Avranches, in which was included the demesne of the duke, the pleas of the sword, and other ducal property not contained in the fief of the viscounty, brought nothing into the exchequer save special rents and the proceeds of the pleas of the sword.9 The castle, the chestnut grove, bits of land'recovered' by jury, &c, were either held freely, or retained in the duke's hands, or accounted for separately on the rolls.10 The pleas of the sword therefore were naturally entrusted to a special servant. There is no record of the manner in which Geoffrey Peilevilain accounted for the pleas.

Walter de Clifford incurred forfeiture in 1233 for his alleged rebellion. He seems also to have suffered a partial forfeiture for his rebellious conduct in 1250. On the latter occasion the Clee-Forest was in the King’s hand, and, as Clifford afterwards deposed, the King gave John Wyard’s Bailiwick to one Roger de Hogelawe. The duties of the Bailiwick seem to have been that Wyard “should travel with one horse and a boy to make attachments of the forest, as his ancestors, he said, had done, of right and of fee, from time whereof memory was not, viz. William Wyard his Grandfather, in time of Henry II, Philip Wyard his Father, in time of King Richard, and himself in the present King’s time for ten years and more.” Clifford, he added, had ejected him five years before, whereby he was damaged £10. Clifford replied that “Wyard had no Charter on the subject, nor had he possession of the tenement to which the Bailiwick in question appertained, but that he had held office merely by favour: moreover, as to the tenement to which the Bailiwick appertained, Roger de Hogelawe held that, as well as the Bailiwick, by gift of the King, when the Bailiwick was in the King’s hand.”

In 1255 the Jurors of Stottesden Hundred complained that the Foresters of Sir Walter de Clifford required from every house within the Bailiwick of La Clye one hen at Christmas and 5 eggs at Easter; and that they collected wheat-sheaves (garbas) in autumn from the vills of Wheathill, Luchton (Longhton), Aston Botterell, Burwarton, and Cleobury North, and that if men denied these imposts they grievously distrained them.

In 1322, Roger Beler, keeper of the castle and honour of Tuttebury, which belonged to Thomas, late earl of Lancaster, was ordered to deliver to William del Borwes and Margaret his wife, mother of Roger son of Richard Wyldegos, the bailiwick of the hundred of Appeltre and Sutton, to be kept by them in the name of the said Roger, a minor in their custody, as the king learned by inquisition taken by the sheriff of Derby that Robert de Ferarus, sometime earl of Derby, granted to Robert son of Gerard Wyldegos the said bailiwick, to have to him and the heirs of his body, rendering therefor 6s. 8d. yearly for all services, and that Robertson of Gerard died seised thereof by the form of the gift, by pretext whereof the aforesaid Roger son of Richard Wildegos and his ancestors were seised of the bailiwick from the time of the grant, and received the profits thereof, until the bailiwick was taken into the king’s hands upon the forfeiture of the said earl Thomas by the king’s steward of the honour aforesaid, and that the aforesaid William had the custody of the bailiwick and made administration in the same by reason of Roger's minority at the time of the earl’s forfeiture.

The bailiwick or jurisdiction of Bevern, formerly belonging to a noble family surnamed from it, but which failed in the last quarter of the fixteenth century. This bailiwick was conferred as a fief on Statz von Munchhausen, who built the present seat there, but his sons by reason of their narrow circumstances were obliged to resign the fief to the Sovereign in consideration of a small sum of money. Duke Ferdinand Albert fixed his residence at Bevern and became the founder of the Bevern line. This jurisdiction contained under it only one place, viz. Bevern, a market-town situated on the west side of the burg or Worberg below Sollingerwalde, and lying on the little river Bever.

Toward the end of the 1400s, in france the Estates, instead of being a meeting of the feudal persons of the kingdom, became the representation of the three orders of the nation. The change was owing to the fact that political feudalism was decayed; seigniories and cities no longer formed petty independent States whose chiefs appeared in person (or by plenipotentiaries) at a sort of Congress. Nobles and ecclesiastics no longer sat individually in virtue of a personal obligation; they were represented collectively and sent deputies in imitation of the Third Estate.

The election unit was the bailiwick, the only important administrative division of the old period (as in England it was the county). Cities and country districts were united in each bailiwick and formed only a single electoral body. The nobility and the clergy acted by themselves. Whatever its population, each bailiwick had the same rights; the number of its deputies was of little importance. The election of the deputies of these two orders took place on a day fixed by the bailiffs and seneschals at the chief place of the bailiwick and of the seneschals' district. The day of election in the bailiwick was not necessarily the same for the three orders. The voting took place by Estates. In each Estate the voting was by bailiwick and not by head, each bailiwick had only one vote which was determined by the majority of its deputies, with the result that it mattered little that the number of deputies varied among the bailiwicks.