The Inquest of Sheriffs was a commission held by King

Henry II of England Henry II (5 March 1133 – 6 July 1189), also known as Henry Curtmantle (french: link=no, Court-manteau), Henry FitzEmpress, or Henry Plantagenet, was King of England from 1154 until his death in 1189, and as such, was the first Angevin king ...

in 1170 into the conditions of local government in England.

Background

In early Angevin England,

sheriff A sheriff is a government official, with varying duties, existing in some countries with historical ties to England where the office originated. There is an analogous, although independently developed, office in Iceland that is commonly transla ...

s played an important part in local government, representing the Crown, keeping the peace, running the operations of the county and royal hundred courts and managing summons and similar legal orders. They usually managed the royal manors in their shire, collecting the rents and spending money locally on the Crown's behalf. They were typically members of the local baronage, but were appointed by the king, and they expected to make a profit from their office.

Inquest

In 1170, King Henry II, who ruled over a network of lands across Europe, returned to England after several years of absence. He promptly established a commission to examine any malpractices in local government, which became known as the Inquest of the Sheriffs. The inquiry was widespread, extending not just to the King's sheriffs but to other royal officers, and even to the financial practices of the leaders of the clergy, the barons and burgesses in the towns. A series of local circuits were established, and the commissioners (in a contemporary's words) required “all the men of the realm, including earls, barons, knights, freeholders and even villeins in every shire to...give true testimony concerning the things of which the sheriffs and their men had deprived them”.

Outcome

By the end of the year, 21 out of the 26 sheriffs in England had been dismissed from office. Of those retained, the majority were not barons, but members of the royal household; while sixteen of the new sheriffs chosen were already employees of the

Exchequer In the civil service of the United Kingdom, His Majesty’s Exchequer, or just the Exchequer, is the accounting process of central government and the government's ''current account'' (i.e., money held from taxation and other government reven ...

. The sweeping changes undermined the links between the local barons and the office of sheriffs, leaving the majority of holders as ''ministeriales''. Henry also increased the role of travelling royal judges in the court system, and increasingly the role of sheriff became one of a local official whose purpose was to represent the royal bureaucracy and assist the judges when they visited, rather than acting as an independent power in their own right.

Surviving returns

Unfortunately only two partial returns from the Inquest survive, one detailing payments to the Earl of Arundel in East Anglia, for such things as the aid for the marriage of Henry's daughter; the other payments to the sheriff from the borough of

Worcester Worcester may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Worcester, England, a city and the county town of Worcestershire in England ** Worcester (UK Parliament constituency), an area represented by a Member of Parliament * Worcester Park, London, Englan ...

for the farm, for conveying prisoners, and for the royal marriage.J. R. Tanner ed., ''The Cambridge Medieval History Vol V'' (Cambridge 1926) p. 582

References

Bibliography