bailiff

[In Dut, baljuw. From Old Fr. bailiff; Fr. bailli = bailiff, inferior judge, seneschal; bailleur = agent, governor; bailler = to give, deliver, put into the hands of; Prov. bailieu; Port. bailio = a bailiff; Ital. balivo: Low Lat. baillivus, ballivus, bajulus = a pedagogue, a tutor of children; Cla . Lat. bajulus =a porter. Cognate with O. Fr. baillir; Prov. bailir to govern; Ital. balire = to bring up, to govern; bali a to, bali a = power, authority; also with bailo = a kind of magistrate, and bali a a nurse. (BAIL, BAILLIE.) The e ential meaning is a person entrusted by a superior with power of superintendence.] IMG:content-1000.png:[blocks in formation] 1. The governor of a castle belonging to the king. 2. A sheriff's officer. Bailiffs are either bailiffs of hundreds or special bailiffs. (a) Bailiffs of Hundreds are officers appointed by the sheriff over the districts so called, to collect fines, to summon juries, to attend the judges and justices at the a izes and quarter se ions, and to execute writs and proce . (b) Special Bailiffs are men appointed for their adroitne and dexterity in hunting and seizing persons liable to arrest. They a ist the bailiffs of hundreds in important work for which the latter have no natural aptitude or acquired skill. Special bailiffs being compelled to enter into an obligation for the proper discharge of their duty are sometimes called bound- bailiffs , a term which the common people have corrupted into a more homely appellation. [BUM-BAILIFF.] ( Black stone : Comment., bk. i., ch. 9.) Formerly bailiffs of liberties , or franchises, were functionaries appointed by each lord within his liberty to execute proce , and generally to do such work as the bailiffs errant were wont to do in larger districts. bāi'-li-wick, s . [From O. Fr. baillie the jurisdiction of a bailiff, and A.S. suff. -wic = a dwelling, station, village, castle, or bay; as Alnwick = the dwelling or village on the Aln; Green wich = the green village; and Norwich =the north village or dwelling. (Bosworth.) In Ger. baillif and Fr. bailliage are a bailiwick.] 'The precincts within which a bailiff po e es jurisdiction. Spec . (in Great Britain), 1. A county. "As the king's bailiff, it is his [the sheriff's) busine to preserve the rights of the king within his bailiwick : for so his county is frequently called in the writs; & word introduced by the princes of the Norman line, in imitation of the French, whose territory is divided into bailiwicks , as that of England into counties."Black stone: Comment., bk. i., ch . 9. 2. A liberty exempted from the jurisdiction of the sheriff of a county, and over which the lord appoints his own bailiff, with the same power within his precincts as that which an under-sheriff exercises under the sheriff of a county. (Black stone: Comment., bk. ii., ch. 3.)