I cannot profess to equal Mr. Shirley in culture, but I yield to no man in enthusiasm for antiquarian rites. Like Burke, I "piously believe in the mysterious virtue of wax and parchment." With Mr. Gladstone, I say that "the principle which gives us ritual in Religion gives us the ceremonial of Courts, the costume of judges, the uniform of regiments, all the language of heraldry and symbol, all the hierarchy of rank and title."
My antiquarian enthusiasm for the Garter must not be allowed to brush aside the more obvious topic of the Sheriffs. That just now[10] is a topic which, as the French say, palpitates with actuality. November is the Sheriffs' month; in it they bloom like chrysanthemums—doomed, alas! to as brief a splendour. The Sheriffs of London and Middlesex—those glorious satellites who revolve round the Lord Mayor of London as the Cardinals round the Pope—are already installed. Their state carriages of dazzling hue, and their liveries stiff with gold bullion, have flung their radiance (as the late Mr. J. R. Green would have said) over the fog and filth of our autumnal climate.
"Who asketh why the Beautiful was made?
A wan cloud drifting o'er the waste of blue,
The thistledown that floats along the glade,
The lilac blooms of April—fair to view,
And naught but fair are these; and such I ween are you.
Yes, ye are beautiful. The young street boys
Joy in your beauty——"
But I am becoming rhapsodical, and with less excuse than "C. S. C.," whose poetic fire was kindled by the sight of the Beadles in the Burlington Arcade.
On Monday the 12th of November, being the morrow of St. Martin, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in clothing of wrought gold and figured silk, attending the ghost of what was once the Court of Exchequer, nominates three gentlemen of good estate to serve the office of High Sheriff for each of the counties of England. Be it remarked in passing that the robe of black and gold which the Chancellor wears on this occasion is that which Mr. Gladstone's statue in the Strand represents, and which, as a matter of fact, he wore at the opening of the Law Courts in December 1882, when, to the astonishment of the unlearned, he walked in procession among the Judges.
Early in the new year—on "the morrow of the Purification" to wit—the Lord President of the Council submits the names of the nominated Sheriffs, duly engrossed on parchment, to the King, who then, with a silver bodkin, "pricks" the name of the gentleman who in each county seems the fittest of the three for the august and perilous office of High Sheriff.
I love to handle great things greatly; so I have refreshed my memory with the constitutional lore of this high theme. The etymology of "Sheriff" I find to be (on the indisputable authority of Dr. Dryasdust) "Scirgeréfa—the 'Reeve' or Fiscal Officer of a Shire." In the Saxon twilight of our national history this Reeve, not yet developed into Sheriff, ranked next in his county to the Bishop and the Ealdorman, or Earl. In those days of rudimentary self-government, the Reeve was elected by popular vote, but Edward II., who seems to have been a bureaucrat before his time, abolished the form of election except as regards the cities, and from his time onwards the High Sheriff of a county has been a nominated officer. Until the days of the Tudors, the High Sheriff wielded great and miscellaneous powers. He was the military head of the county. He commanded the "Posse Comitatus," in which at his bidding every male over fifteen was forced to serve; and he was, in all matters of civil and criminal jurisdiction, the executant and minister of the law.
Quomodo ceciderunt fortes! Henry VIII. at one fell swoop terminated the Sheriff's military power and made the new-fangled Lord-Lieutenant commander of the local forces; and successive Acts of Parliament have, by increasing the powers of courts and magistracies, reduced the civil power of the Sheriff to a dismal shadow of its former greatness. Still, in the person of his unromantic representative, the "Bound Bailiff," he watches the execution of civil process in the case of those who, to use a picturesque phrase, have "outrun the constable"; still, with all the pantomimic pomp of coach and footmen, trumpeters and javelin-men, he conducts the Judges of Assize to and from the court; and still he must be present in court when the capital sentence is pronounced. I believe I am right in stating that there is no such document as a "Death-warrant" known to English jurisprudence. The only warrant for the execution of a felon is the verbal sentence of the Judge pronounced in open court; and, as the High Sheriff is responsible for the due execution of that sentence, he must be present when it is pronounced, in order that he may know, by the evidence of his own eyes, that the person brought out for execution is the person on whom the sentence was pronounced. It is probable that many of my readers recollect the first Lord Tollemache, a man who combined singular gifts of physical strength with a delicate humanitarianism. He had been High Sheriff of Cheshire in very early life, and, till he was elevated to the Peerage, it was possible that his turn might come round again. Contemplating this contingency, he said that if he were again charged with the execution of a capital sentence, he should, on his own authority, offer the condemned man a dose of chloroform, so that, if he chose, he might go unconscious to his doom.