| Administrative History | Twice a year the sheriff undertook a tourn or circuit and held a public court in each hundred of the county. The court included a view of frankpledge, the appearance of representatives of each township to be examined about minor criminal offences committed there. These might include assaults and brawls, maiming and theft of beasts, obstruction of highways and watercourses, cases of trespass, offences against the assizes of bread and ale, and so on.
Records of the Sheriff's Tourn for the Hundred of Morleston and Litchurch between 1606 to 1609 are contained in this parchment-bound manuscript volume. Such documents are rare because, although the sheriff was an officer of the Crown, records do not appear to have been systematically kept, neither centrally nor locally. None survive for this period in the National Archives nor in any local record offices in the Midlands.
By the late Tudor and early Stuart period, county administration was becoming established through justices of the peace and the role of the sheriff as royal deputy was changing. This document provides evidence of that alteration because it records judgments by the sheriff which are subsequently endorsed by county justices of the peace
The sheriff's tourn is also important evidence of how local communities managed their environment and what penalties were imposed for infringement of regulations relating to common land, disposal of waste, cleaning of streams and watercourses, pasturing of animals, mending of hedges and fences and maintenance of roads. A large number of communities are covered including Egginton, Willlington, Litchurch, Ockbrook, Alvaston, Boulton, Findern, Mickleover and Littleover. |