SHERIF 



SHERIFF 



393 





to whom he had been passionately attached, though 

 he must at times have caused her great unhappi- 

 ness, died ; and three years later he married again 

 n Miss Ogle, daughter of the Dean of Winchester, 

 who survived him. The affairs of the theatre had 

 gone badly. The old building had to be closet! as 

 unfit to hold large audiences, and a new one built 

 which was opened in 1794, but this also was 

 destroyed by fire in 1809. This last calamity put 

 the finishing touch to Sheridan's pecuniary diffi- 

 culties, which had long been serious. Misfortunes 

 gathered thick upon him, and his latter days were 

 spent in trouble and privation. He died on the 

 7tli July 1816 in great poverty, with bailiffs 

 actually in possession of his house ; but the friends 

 of his prosperity came forward to give him a 

 magnificent funeral in Westminster Abbey. 



See the Memoirs prefixed to editions of his works by 

 Leigh Hunt (1840), James P. Browne (2 vols. 1873-75), 

 and Stainforth( 1874); Lives by Watkins (2 vols. 1817) 

 and Moore (2 voLs. 1825); Sheridan and hit Timci (2 

 vols. 1859) ; Memoirs of 3fr Frances Sheridan, by her 

 granddaughter, Alicia Le Fanu ( 1824 ) ; W. Fraser Rae, 

 Wilkn, Sh.riilan, and Fox (1874); the short life by the 

 present writer ('English Men of Letters ' series, 1883); 

 Percy Fitzgerald, Live* of the Sheridam (2 vola. 1887) ; 

 Lloyd C. Sanders, Sheridan (1891); and the Life by 

 Fraser Rae (2 voln. 1896). See also NORTON (SlBs). 



SlH-rif, or SHEREEF, designates a descendant of 

 Mohammed through his daughter Fatima and Ali. 

 The title is inherited both from the paternal and 

 the maternal side ; and thus the numoer of mem- 

 bers of this aristocracy is very large among the Mos- 

 lems. The men have the privilege of wearing green 

 turbans, the women green veils, green being the 

 prophet's colour. Many of these sherifs founded 

 dynasties in Africa ; the line which rules in Morocco 

 (q v. ) boasts of that proud designation. The ruling 

 prince of the district of Mecca and guardian of the 

 Kaaba (q.v.) is called sherif, sometimes for the 

 sake of distinction grand sherif. 



Sheriff (A.S. ncir-gerefa, 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 trilling 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 confir- 

 mation by the crown. But popular elections for 

 that purpose were put an end to by a statute of 9 

 E<1. II., which enacted that in future the sheriffs 

 should be assigned by the chancellor, treasurer, and 

 in. I _"<. Ever since that statute the custom has 

 I ii. mid now is, for the judges, the Lord Chan- 

 cellor, and Chancellor of the Exchequer to meet in 

 the 1'iinrt of Exchequer (now the King's or Queen's 

 Division ) on the morrow of St Martin ( 12th Novem- 

 ber ), 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 

 liU name, ami 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 U 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..) as earlv 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 noble- 

 man while he holds office. He has the duty of 

 summoning the posse comitattis 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 numl>er of persons called 

 bound-bailifis (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 1 ') 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 gradu- 

 ally 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 usurpa- 

 tion 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 lx>th countries the office was entrusted to gentle- 

 men 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 per- 

 formed 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 

 depute 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 prin- 

 cipal part of tbe duties of the sheriff, appears to 

 have been engrafted on the office probably on the 

 theory that these orders were those of tlie 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. 



SHERIFF, in Scotland, is a title given to the 

 magistrate and judge of a county. In Scotland 

 the office of sheriff is still that of a local judge, and 



