Reeve - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition reeve

Definition :

Reeve [fr. gerefa, Sax.], a steward or bailiff. See DYKE-REEVE; FIELD-REEVE.

A ministerial officer of high rank having local jurisdiction, the chief magistrate of a hundred, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 1284.

Reeve, means a ministerial officer of high rank having local jurisdiction; the Chief Magistrate of a hundred. The reeve executed process, kept the peace and enforced the law by holding court within the hundred. - 'All the freeholders, unless relieved by special exemption 'owed suit' at the hundred-moot and the reeve of the hundred presided over it. In Anglo-Saxon times, the reeve was an indepen-dent official, and the hundred-moot was not a preliminary stage to the shire-moot at all.....But after the conquest the hundred assembly, now called a court as all the others were, lost its importance very quickly. Pleas of land were taken from it, and its criminal jurisdiction limited to one of holding suspects in temporary detention. The reeve of the hundred became the deputy of the sheriff, and the chief purpose of holding the hundred court was to enable the sheriff to hold his 'town' and to permit a view of frankpledge, i.e. an inspection of the person who ought to belong to the frankpledge system.' (Handbook of Anglo American Legal History, 174-175, 196, Max Radin) , Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 1284