Conclusion

The Office of Sheriff has undergone profound change in the millennium of its existence. The Office owes its origins to the Anglo-Saxon system of local self government, where the ‘shire reeve’ was the chief of a group of several hundred families. The Sheriff assumed a particular role under Alfred the Great for the maintenance of law and order in each county.

The Norman Conquest led to a centralisation of power. Since the Anglo-Saxons’ system of local self government threatened the authority of the Norman Kings, the Sheriff’s powers grew markedly as an appointee of the King, outstripping the hitherto equally important powers of the Earldorman and the Bishop.

From the thirteenth century onwards the power of the Sheriff began to decline, as the imperative for centralised power became less pressing on English monarchs. The Magna Carta of 1215 significantly confined the power of the King relative to his nobles and guaranteed certain liberties to his subjects. The Sheriff functioned as the King’s tax collector and his authority had expanded with the Crown’s avarice for the levying of scutage. While the Sheriff’s power was reduced along with his King’s, the Magna Carta affirmed the role of the Sheriff, mentioning the office no less than nine times.

By the late eighteenth century and the settlement of Australia, the decline in the powers but not the status of the Office led to significant uncertainty in the role of the Sheriff in the new colony. Sheriffs were appointed by the Crown and came to the colony with the expectation that they would assume a role with the powers of a High Sheriff in England. This was perfectly understandable, but disregarded the peculiar circumstances of their function within a penal colony. Resources were scarce and the Sheriff was forced to occupy a role dominated by his attendance at court and as chief gaoler for those committed to custody. The little time he possessed for the serving of summons and other court orders was sorely strained and plagued with problems of personal liability and insufficient staff assistance.

The other states of Australia benefited from the evolutionary process undergone by the Office in New South Wales. Only the Tasmanian Sheriff has a history as long as that of New South Wales, and there the jurisdiction was so small and so almost exclusively penal oriented that problems of authority were unlikely to emerge. Western Australia’s geographic separation from the other colonies and its growing free population prompted the appointment of a Sheriff, along with its own civil court in 1832. South Australia, the only state not to begin as a convict colony, originally acquired its own Sheriff in 1837. Queensland and Victoria were offshoots of the Office in New South Wales, the first prompted by the penal settlement and the second required by the growing settlement in the Port Phillip district. The Northern Territory’s much later settlement as a free territory meant that a Sheriff was not required until well into the twentieth century.

The Sheriff’s responsibility for the execution of the death penalty was common to all states. The significance and incidence of capital punishment until at least the close of the nineteenth century gave the office a recognition, and at times notoriety, that its role as the instrument of the courts’ civil jurisdiction would never bestow.

The role of the office in 1992 is certainly different from what it was in 1992, but one which nonetheless respects its millennium of development. Its ancient responsibilities for the summoning of the juries, the security of the courts and the executing of court orders remain intact. The enormity of civil actions requiring execution, the growingcomplexity of court centres and the increasing rate of criminal trial disposition imply that the Office of Sheriff will continue the tradition of the oldest existing Anglo-Saxon legal office.

Acknowledgements

* This document was prepared by Ross Ward of the Department of Courts Administration to commemorate the millennium of the Office of Sheriff.

A substantial portion of the factual details in the sections on “Origins in England” and “The Office of Sheriff in New South Wales” were obtained from an article by J.M. Bennett in (1975-76) 7 Sydney Law Review, entitled, “The Officeof Sheriff: Historical Notes on its Evolution in New South Wales”, 1975.

The information concerning the development of the Sheriff’s Offices in Australia was provided by the current Sheriffs: David Lennon, N.S.W.; Ian Ritchard, Tasmania; Colin McPhail, Western Australia; John Carr, South Australia; Peter Duncan, Victoria; Ed Green, Queensland; and, Karen Jackson, Northern Territory.