Definition
The office of sheriff, or the period during which that office is held. Shrievalty encompasses both the position itself — the dignity and authority vested in a sheriff — and the term or tenure of that appointment. In historical usage, the word could also refer to the jurisdictional territory over which a sheriff exercised authority, roughly equivalent to the county in English law.
The term is interchangeable with SHERIFFALTY, which Anderson's Dictionary of Law treats as the primary form, directing readers there from this entry. Both forms appear in older legal literature; neither is common in modern American legal writing.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The office, jurisdiction, or tenure of a sheriff, chiefly in reference to the British office; uncommon in reference to the American office.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The office, or sphere of jurisdiction, of a sheriff; sheriffalty. Webster cites Blackstone directly: "It was ordained by 28 Edward I that the people shall have election of sheriff in every shire where the shrievalty is not of inheritance."
The gap between common and legal meaning is narrow here, but the legal context adds a dimension the common definition underweights: shrievalty in legal sources specifically concerns the formal legal character of the office — whether it is appointive, elective, or hereditary — and the rights and duties attached to tenure, not merely the fact of holding the position. The phrase "shrievalty is not of inheritance" in the Blackstone quotation captures this precisely: the legal question was whether a given shrievalty had become a private, heritable property right, with significant consequences for how that sheriff could be selected or removed.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter shrievalty primarily in three contexts: English constitutional and legal history, early American colonial and state materials that borrowed English forms, and treatise literature through the nineteenth century.
In English sources, the key legal question surrounding shrievalty was whether it had become a hereditary franchise. In counties where the office descended by inheritance, the normal mechanism of public election — codified by statute as early as Edward I — did not apply. This created a legally distinct category of sheriff whose authority derived from private right rather than public appointment. Researchers examining early English county governance, franchise law, or Crown-versus-subject disputes over local authority should be alert to this distinction.
In American materials, the term appears with much less frequency and almost never carries the hereditary dimension, since American sheriffs are elected or appointed officers without heritable tenure. When shrievalty appears in American legal writing, it generally refers to the office and its statutory term. The word itself largely disappears from American legal usage after the mid-nineteenth century, supplanted by plainer language.
A trap for researchers using historical indexes: shrievalty and sheriffalty appear inconsistently across sources. Anderson cross-references to sheriffalty as the primary entry; Rapalje & Lawrence treat shrievalty as sufficient. A search for one term may miss material indexed under the other. Researchers working in older digest or encyclopedia systems should check both forms.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry as reproduced contains obvious textual corruption — material concerning conditions annexed to gifts appears mid-entry and is plainly a typographical intrusion from an adjacent entry. Researchers relying on that edition should treat the shrievalty entry as ending after "the period of that office" and disregard the remainder as editorial error.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries agree completely on the core definition: shrievalty is the office of sheriff and the period of that office. There is no meaningful disagreement across Black's first and second editions or Rapalje & Lawrence on this point.
What the historical dictionaries do not capture is the substantive legal complexity that Blackstone and the underlying English statutes reflect. The bare definition — office plus period — is accurate but thin. Black's first edition appends what appears to be a fragment of a Latin maxim ("you include every charge. A Roman maxim. Tray. Lat. Max.") that seems to be typographical noise from an adjacent entry, not substantive content about shrievalty itself. Researchers should not rely on that fragment.
The Webster's 1913 entry, drawing on Blackstone, is arguably more legally informative than any of the four dictionary sources, precisely because it surfaces the hereditary franchise question. For a researcher needing more than a bare definition, Blackstone's Commentaries (Book I, Chapter IX, on the sheriff) remains the most useful single source for understanding what shrievalty meant as a live legal concept.
Jurisdictional Note
The term and its full legal significance are essentially English. American jurisdictions adopted the office of sheriff but not the hereditary franchise concept, so the English legal distinctions around shrievalty have no direct American equivalent. In American legal research, the term is largely a historical artifact.