bear true allegiance to her Majesty Queen Victoria, and will defend her to the utmost of my power against all conspiracies and attempts whatever which shall be made against her person, crown or dignity; and I will do my utmost endeavour to declare and make known to her Majesty, her heirs and successors, all treasons and traitorous conspiracies which may be formed against her or them: And I do faithfully promise to maintain, support and defend to the utmost of my power the succession of the crown, which succession, by an Act intituled "An Act for the further Limitation of the Crown and better securing the Rights and Liberties of the Subject," is and stands limited to the Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and the heirs of her body being Protestants; hereby utterly renouncing and abjuring any obedience or allegiance unto any other person claiming or pretending a right to the crown of this realm: And I do further declare, that it is not an article of my faith, and that I do renounce, reject and abjure the opinion, that princes excommunicated or deprived by the Pope or any other authority of the see of Rome may be deposed or murdered by their subjects or by any person whatsoever: And I do declare, that I do not believe that the Pope of Rome, or any other foreign prince, prelate, person, state, or potentate, hath or ought to have any temporal or civil jurisdiction, power, superiority or pre-eminence, directly or indirectly, within this realm. I do swear that I will defend to the utmost of my power the settlement of property within this realm as established by the laws: And I do hereby disclalm, disavow and solemnly abjure any tention to subvert the present Church Establishment as settled by law within this realm: And I do solemnly swear that I never will exercise any privilege to which I am or may become entitled, to diturb or weaken the Protestant religion or Protestant government in the United Kingdom: And I do solemnly in the presence of God profess, testify and declare, that I do make this declaration and every part thereof in the plain and ordinary sense of the words of this oath, without any evasion, equivocation or mental reservation whatsoever. So help me God. in This oath is to be administered in the same manner and time Before whom and by the same persons as the oaths for which it is substituted were. 10 Geo. 4, c. 7, s. 6. Oath of High Sheriff in Wales (i). OATH OF OFFICE. Ye shall swear that well and truly ye will serve the Queen in the office of Sheriff of the county of C. in Wales, and do the Queen's profits that belong to you by way of your office as far form as you can or may. Ye shall truly keep the Queen's rights and all that belong to the crown. Ye shall not assent to decrease, to lessen or to concealment of the Queen's rights or of her franchises. And whenever ye shall have knowledge that the Queen's rights or the rights of the crown be concealed or withdrawn, be it in lands, rents, franchises, suits or any other thing, ye shall do your power to make them be restored to the Queen again, and if you may not do it yourself ye shall certify the Queen or some of her council thereof, such as ye hold for certain will say it unto the Queen. Ye shall not respite the Queen's debts for any gift or favour when you may raise the same without great grievance to the debtors. Ye shall truly and (i) Free from stamp duty, 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 99, s. 6. taken. Before whom taken, &c. Consequence of refusal. righteously trust the people of your sheriffwick, and do right to poor as to rich in all things that belongeth to your office. Ye shall do no wrong to any man for any gift or other behest or promise of goods for favour or sale. Ye shall disturb no man's right. Ye shall truly acquit all those of whom ye shall any thing receive of the Queen's debts. Ye shall nothing take whereby the Queen may lose, or whereby that right may be disturbed, letted, or the Queen's debts delayed. Ye shall truly return and truly serve all the Queen's writs as put forth as is in your cunning. Ye shall none have to be your under-sheriff of any of the Sheriff's clerks of the last year past. Ye shall take no bailiff into your service but such as you will answer for. Ye shall make each of your bailiffs make such oath as ye make yourself in that that belongeth to their occupation. Ye shall receive no writ by you or any of yours unsealed, or any sealed under the seal of any Justice, saving Justice in Eyre, of Justice assigned in the same shire where ye be sheriff in, or other Justices having power and authority to make any writs unto you by the laws of the land, or of Justice of Newgate. Ye shall make your bailiff of the true and sufficient men of the county. Ye shall not let your sheriffwick nor any bailiwick thereof to favour to any man. Ye shall truly set and return reasonable and due issues of them that be within your bailiwick after their estate and their honour, and make your panels yourself of such persons as be most meet, most sufficient and not suspected nor procured as is ordained by the statute, and over this in eschewing and restraint of the manslaughters, robberies, and other manifold grievous offences that be done daily, namely, by such as name themselves soldiers and other vagrant persons which increase in number and multiply, so that the Queen's subjects may not surely ride nor go to do such things as they have to do to their intolerable peril and grievance. Ye shall truly and effectually and with all diligence possible to your power execute the statutes as the statutes of Winchester and vagabonds. These things ye shall well and truly observe and keep. So help you God. The Oaths of Allegiance, Supremacy, and Abjuration, or instead thereof, in the case of a Roman Catholic subject, the oath before mentioned, must be taken in the same manner, &c. as Sheriffs of English counties are enjoined to do. The assurance also must be taken and subscribed in like manner. If a person appointed refuse to take the oaths of office he was usually punished in the Star Chamber, but now he is proceeded against by criminal information in the Queen's Bench (k); a refusal to take the oaths is a refusal of the office (1). In counties of cities and counties of towns, as in London, certain penalties are attached to the refusal of the office (by particular statutes or by some bye-laws), and these penalties are recoverable by action. (k) Dalt. 15; Rex v. Woodrow, 2 Term Rep. 731. (1) Star v. Mayor of Exeter, 3 Lev. 116. SECTION V. OLD AND NEW SHERIFF. Old and New Sheriff, conti IN the reign of Edward the Third (a) it was declared that any Sheriff abiding in his office above One Year should be liable to severe penalties and disabilities; but at a subsequent period nuance in of our history some relaxation was made to this rule of law by office, &c. allowing the outgoing Sheriff, (unless lawfully discharged before,) to occupy his office during Michaelmas and Hilary Terms, after the year that his office was ended, if the incoming Sheriff had not his patent ready, and did not take the oaths (b), &c. Notwithstanding, however, these old statutes it was holden that the appointment might be "durante bene placito," or " during the Queen's pleasure" (c); and such was the form of the royal writ; and such is the form of the warrant of appointment prescribed by the recent enactment (d) in the reign of our late beloved sovereign. Therefore until a new Sheriff be named his office cannot be determined unless by the demise of the Crown, or by his own death: in the former case he may hold his office for six months after the demise, unless sooner displaced by the successor (e). In the latter, if any High Sheriff of any county of Eng- Who acts land or Wales shall happen to die before the expiration of his the death of year, his Under-sheriff, or Deputy, shall nevertheless continue in the High office, and execute the same in the name of the deceased Sheriff until another Sheriff be appointed and sworn; and the Undersheriff, or Deputy, is answerable for a proper discharge of the duties of his office in all respects as the deceased Sheriff would have been if he had been living; and the security given by the Under-sheriff, or Deputy, to the deceased Sheriff is to stand as a security in the meantime (ƒ): in such a case the Under-sheriff, or Deputy, is by virtue of this statute a quasi High Sheriff, and stands in that relation to the world and to the incoming Sheriff. in case of Sheriff. When no demise of the Crown or death of the High Sheriff Expiration determines the office the usual period when High Sheriffs receive of office by (a) 14 Edw. 3, c. 7; 28 Hen. 6, c. 3; 8 Edw. 9, c. 4; 23 Hen. 6, c. 8; 42 Edw. 3, c. 9; 6 Hen. 8, c. 18. (b) 12 Edw. 4, c. 1; 17 Edw. 4, c. 6; 23 Hen. 6, c. 38. (c) 4 Rep. 32. (d) 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 99; anté, (e) 1 Ann, st. 1, c. 8; Dalt. 7, 8. efflux of time. Relation in which they stand to each other. their warrants of appointment is, as before observed, in Hilary Term; but, note, as the appointment is now" durante bene placito," they are not necessarily made out then (g), and are sometimes, for reasons influencing her Majesty in Council, postponed. It is highly important to define and know the true relation between the new and old Sheriff, and their relation to the world at the time when the former receives this warrant of appointment. The warrant of appointment per se does not affect their relative situation, but operates only as an authority to the incoming Sheriff to qualify himself for entering upon his office, and to take from the outgoing Sheriff a transfer of all writs, prisoners, &c.; such was the practical effect of the patent, and such it is conceived is that of its substitute the present warrant of appointment. It becomes then material to consider when and by what process their relative positions are changed, that is, when and by what process the one becomes charged and the other discharged from the custody of the county. By analogy to the old law the rule may thus When the briefly be laid down: the old Sheriff is not discharged, nor the new Sheriff charged till two things are done, viz. the receipt of the warrant of appointment by the incoming Sheriff, and the delivery to the outgoing Sheriff of the signed duplicate list and account mentioned in the seventh section of the recent statute (h), whom the same shall be a good and sufficient discharge of and from all, &c. without any Writ of Discharge or other writ whatsoever." old Sheriff is discharged, and the new charg ed. 6 to The section of the statute above alluded to(i) is in the following words:"That every Sheriff of any county, city, liberty, division, town corporate, or place, shall at the expiration of his office make out and deliver to the new or incoming Sheriff a true and correct list and account under his hand of all prisoners in his (g) As occurred this year in the cases of Staffordshire and Glamorganshire, the Sheriffs of which were not appointed until the 26th day of February. John Stevenson Salt, Esq. of Heeping Cross, of the former, and Howell Gwyn, of Alltwen, of the latter, in the room of Nash Vaughan Edwards Vaughan, of Lanely, Esq.; and on the 4th of April Robert Oliver Jones, of Fonmen Castle, Esq. in place of Howell Gwyn, Esq. (h) 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 99, s. 7; Fitz. Case, Cro. Eliz. 28; Wesly v. Skinner, Noy, 51; 19 Vin. Abr. 451; and cases cited. (i) 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 99, s. 7. custody, and of all writs and other process in his hands not wholly executed by him, with all such particulars as shall be necessary to explain to the said incoming Sheriff the several matters intended to be transferred to him, and shall thereupon turn over and transfer to the care and custody of the said incoming Sheriff all such prisoners, writs, and process, and all records, books, and matters appertaining to the said office of Sheriff; and the said incoming Sheriff shall thereupon sign and give a duplicate of such list and accounts to the Sheriff going out of of fice, to whom the same shall be a good and sufficient discharge of and from all the prisoners therein mentioned and transferred to the said incoming Sheriff, and the further charge of the execution of the writs, process, and other matters therein contained without any Writ of Discharge or other writ whatsoever; and the said incoming Sheriff shall thereupon stand and be charged with the said prisoners, and also with the execution and care of the said writs, process, and other matters contained in the said list and account, as fully and effectually as if the same writs and process had been turned over by indenture and schedule; and in case any Sheriff shall refuse or neglect at the expiration of his office to make out, sign, and deliver such list and account as aforesaid, and to turn over the process aforesaid in manner aforesaid, every such Sheriff so neglecting or refusing shall be liable to make such satisfaction by damages and costs to the party aggrieved as he, she, or they shall sustain by such neglect or refusal." section. There are three things notable in this section; firstly, that the Contents of writs, prisoners, &c. are not to be turned over by the indenture and schedule required by the 20 Geo. 2, c. 37, but by the true and correct list and account under his (the old Sheriff's) hand of all prisoners, &c. with all such particulars as may be necessary to explain the several matters intended to be transferred; secondly, the signing and giving a duplicate of such list and account to the old Sheriff, which act of itself operates as a discharge to the old Sheriff and a charge to the new Sheriff, without any writ of discharge, as under the old law, or any other writ whatsoever; thirdly, the remedy a party aggrieved has for any damage sustained against the old Sheriff for neglecting or refusing to make out, sign and deliver the list and account aforesaid, with all such particulars as might be necessary to explain |