iS6 MANORIAL ADMINISTRATION
This view also seems to be accepted by Yinogradoff, who lends
his great authority to the statement that "on every single manor
we find two persons of authority—the bailitf or beadle...an
officer appointed by the lord----By his side appears the reeve,
nominated from among the peasants of a particular township
and mostly chosen by them/'1 The statements of both of these
authorities seem to be amply justified by reference to the
treatises only, but there is surely much value in Sir William
Ashley's caution:
It may be doubted whether the description in Flcta actually cor-
responded with the general practice—whether there were in fact both
reeve and bailifF on every manor. It is more likely that was a lawyer's
generalisation, never really true, or that, if it ever had been true, it was
already, by the time that book was written, ceasing to be so.2
Any careful study of manorial documents will show that the
contemporary scribes who compiled the accounts and the Court
Rolls could not differentiate clearly between the various manorial
officers. Bailiff, bedell, reeve, sergeant—these titles are bandied
about in a way which indicates how hazy the writer himself was
of their precise meaning, A man is called Alan the reeve in one
entry and in the next is given the title of sergeant: Henry the
bailiff becomes the bedell lower on the ssame roll, and so on,
though few scribes, it is to be hoped, were so muddled as the
one who bracketed comprehensively the reeves, ale-tasters and
foresters elected at the Hales Manor Court, and promoted them
all by calling them bailiffs (ballivi)*
The truth is that the documents and treatises are comple-
mentary, but, even so, they require to be used with the greatest
caution before any valid generalisations can be made. Two con-
siderations at least must always be borne in mind: first, that the
widest variations of procedure and customary use were possible
on manors only a few miles apart, and therefore we cannot
accept any clear-cut system such as that shown in Fleta\ and,
secondly, that the lax use of terms by the medieval scribe, as
1 Villcdnage> 318.
2 Economic History, i, 12.
8 Hales Rolls, 430, 460, Cf. Durham Halmote Rolls, 46, 47; Davenport,
op. cit. 50 n. 4; Wakefield Rolls, in, viii, etc.