bation of privy-council; but also a power of disposing of most of the places belonging to the city-officers, and of electing annually eleven overseers, or rulers of the fraternity of watermen. G2 A SHERIFF A SHERIFF OF A COUNTY. THE Sheriff is the officer to whom the king, by his letters patent, commits the custody of a county; and his chief qualification is the possession of sufficient land within the same to answer the king and the people in any manner of complaint. Sheriffs were formerly chosen by the inhabitants of the several counties, though in some, as in Westmoreland at the present day, the sheriffs were hereditary. These popular elections, however, growing tumultuous, were put an end to by a statute in the ninth year of King Edward II.; which enacted that the sheriffs sheriffs should from thenceforth be assigned by the lord chancellor, treasurer, and the judges, as being persons in whom the trust might with safety be reposed. Other statutes also were made in succeeding reigns to regulate the election ; and the custom now is, which has obtained ever since the time of Henry VI., that all the judges, together with the other great officers, meet in the exchequer-chamber on the morrow of All Soul's yearly, (now altered to the morrow of St. Martin) and then and there propose persons to the king, who afterwards appoints one of them to be sheriff. The sheriff is not only the governor, but may be likewise styled the treasurer |