1921 'ADVENTUS VICECOMITUM 1258-72 483 theory the sheriff came to the exchequer once a year to render his account. He also had to attend in person, or by duly appointed deputy, twice in the year to make his profer. Whether this means that he normally came up twice or three times is not certain, nor is it clear to what extent the appointment of a deputy was officially sanctioned. Every county in England did not, however, send a sheriff regularly to the exchequer. Certain counties, as, for example, the palatinates, were undoubtedly abnormal. Moreover, a shire which is normal at one period may possibly be abnormal at another. An analysis of the way in which the shires accounted in the years 5-9 Henry II shows that the normal counties were thirty-four in number at that date, and that they answered regularly for all five years. 1 Middlesex, it is true, appears to have answered only for four of these years, but London answered for all five. Cheshire, Cornwall, Durham, Lancashire, and Westmorland, as we might expect, did not render any account. An examination of a period of ten years before the Pro- visions of Oxford 2 shows the same state of affairs at that date, with only slight modifications. Thus, Lancashire, though still very irregular, shows a tendency to become normal, and has consequently been included among the shires which account regularly. Rutland, on the contrary, becomes clearly abnormal, failing to account for long periods at a time. 3 Otherwise, the position of the counties is as it was under Henry II, except that a system of grouping two shires under a single sheriff has sprung up, there being ten such groups. There are, therefore, thirty -four normal counties, but only twenty-four normal adminis- trative areas presided over by a sheriff who accounts regularly at the exchequer. In this connexion, it may be observed that London and Middlesex have been treated throughout this article as an area presided over by a single sheriff, though two sheriffs actually held office at a time in the city. The abnormal shires are omitted from subsequent calculations, since their inclusion leads only to confusion. In theory, the sheriff made his profer at Easter and rendered his account at Michaelmas, but this is one of the cases where medieval practice diverges widely from theory. 4 If there were no evidence to support this contention, common sense would suggest that it must be so : the account of even a single sheriff, considering the elaborate procedure and the cumbersome machinery, must have taken a considerable time. An examina- tion of the Compotus Comitatus entries and of the Dies Dati 1 Pipe Rolls 5-9 Hen. II (Pipe Roll Society). 2 i. e. 30-9 Hen. III. 3 See Pipe Roll 56 Hen. Ill, under Rutland, where the sheriff accounts for 43-56 Hen. Ill, i. e. for fourteen years together. 4 Tout, Chapters, ii. 97-8, n. 3. ii2
