What was tax collection like in medieval England, and what was the Sheriff's role?
Logically wouldn't taxes be on the order of the king or local baron? Why was the Sheriff singled out in the legend?
Hello, sorry for late response.
TL;DR: Anglo-Norman (Angevin) sheriffs in late 12th century England are generally assumed to have taken in from local inhabitants much more than their actual payment to the king.
English monarchs in the 12th century are often said to have had the most organized local (as well as central) administrative organization, based on the written record, among their counterpart in High Medieval Western Europe, but I afraid people, especially non-specialists, sometimes overestimate what even they could.
Most of the local officials in Latin West at that time were not directly salaried, and sheriffs were no exceptions. The king used to commissioned his judicial as well as financial tasks within a territorial unit called shire/ country.....often based on the 'auction', and in turn sheriffs owed the annual payment (audit) to the crown to their ruler. In other words, applicants of each 'shrievalty' had to bid a fixed country farm. Then, how could they draw much profit as they could from their 'investment'? There must have been some room for individual sheriffs to exploit the inhabitants most efficiently, by improvising additional method as well as opportunities (Note that the sheriffs was also a judge as well as fine collector in their appointed local community).
Late 12th century authors were well aware that many sheriffs were greed and prone to fill their pockets, and some of them even could distinguish the 'unjust' exaction imposed by individual sheriffs from the due payment to the ruler. Bisson considers this new kind of mentality on the 'just' or accountable rule as a very novel development in (late) 12th century in course of European history (Bisson 2009: Chap. 5). The 'good' ruler were also expected to check the actual behavior of their 'corrupted' subordinate local officers regularly. Otherwise, he could also be regarded as a bad ruler! Bisson cites the following anecdote on Geoffrey of Plantagenet (father of King Henry II of England): One day, Geoffrey got lost in the forest while hunting and heard from a complaint of the farmer who didn't recognize that the stranger was in fact his lord. The farmer said that bailiffs of Lord Geoffrey invented many improvised ways of exaction on the farmers that impoverished them severely, but Geoffrey was really surprised, since he, the lord, himself had not been reported none of these new 'dues'! Geoffrey thanked the farmer for this complaint, conducted the inquest on his officials, and prosecuted the corrupted bailiffs in his court as a kind of traitors.
You can see another example (by King Louis IX of France in the middle of the 13th century) in the comment of /u/WelfOnTheShelf in this thread. While these examples are French ones, the ruler of Angevin England, namely King Henry II (son of said Geoffrey) is one of the earliest historical figures who tried to impose such a strict control over local officials. Henry II instructed to initiate the famous 'Inquest of Sheriffs' in 1170 to check the abuse of power of local officials by auditing the much more detailed fiscal accounts of individual sheriffs in the last several fiscal years. As a result, more than 70% of the previously commissioned sheriffs were removed from their offices. Now they became more dismissable and accountable on behalf of their ruler, the king, at least in theory.
On the other hand, Angevin rulers of England as well as Normandy had a dilemma to maximize their royal income for himself, in response to the possible threat of Capetian kings of France. King John of England once tried to implement a reform on this bidding system of the office of individual sheriffs in 1204/05 (the fiscal year of 1204): He introduced salaried, custodian sheriffs who had to pay all the received payment in the appointed country to the king. Thanks for these new kind of sheriffs, the royal income from the counties in 1205 is said to increase by 30%. In turn, however, this reform could contribute to the further unpopularity of King John, since his subject couldn't exempt himself to be blamed anymore, instead of greed, corrupted sheriffs as bad representatives of the royal authority in countryside. In the end, King John had to give up this novel experiment, at least in a short term, due to the political rebellion against him (Bartlett 2000: 151).
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