Bailiff (France)

A bailiff (French: bailli, French pronunciation: ​[baji]) was the king’s administrative representative during the ancien régime in northern France, where the bailiff was responsible for the application of justice and control of the administration and local finances in his bailiwick (baillage).

Name

Bailli (12th-century French bailif, "administrative official, deputy") was derived from a Vulgar Latin term *bajulivus meaning "official in charge of a castle", i.e. a royal castellan.

History

In the late 12th and early 13th century, King Philip II, an able and ingenious administrator who founded the central institutions on which the French monarchy's system of power would be based, prepared the expansion of the royal demesne through his appointment of bailiffs in the king's northern lands (the domaine royal), based on medieval fiscal and tax divisions (the "baillie") which had been used by earlier sovereign princes such as the Duke of Normandy. In Flanders, the count appointed similar bailiffs (Dutch: baljuw). The equivalent agent in the king's southern lands acquired after the inheritance of the County of Toulouse was the seneschal.