Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/176

168 was followed as sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire by his son Ivo de Heriz, in office 1127–9. Futhermore Serlo de Burg, who first appears in the royal service as custodian of the property of the archbishop of York, in later years as justice, the type of person much employed in administering King Henry's demesne, held these two shires prior to 1127 and seems to have purchased them, in or just before 1129, for his son Osbert Silvanus. The king, having assured himself that administrative power shall not be in the hands of the nobles who have defied authority, is content to let it rest with new families which have proved their capacity. The administrative motive is present in these days even when the personal or political seems to prevail.

This holds good even where hereditary or baronial shrievalties remain. Miles of Gloucester, sheriff as well as constable of the realm, after the decease of his father, Walter, from 1128 to 1130 held Staffordshire along with the old family county. Moreover he and Payn fitz John, another border lord prominent at the curia, and sheriff of Shropshire and Herefordshire, were royal justices both in this region and in Pembrokeshire. The story told in the Gesta Stephani of their oppressive rule from the Severn to the sea shows that they were not lacking in energy.

The occasional letting of a county for a gersoma, the equivalent of the later fine pro comitatu habendo, is a further mark of the new administrative system. Men who held even the highest positions at court were in some instances permitted to purchase them. The gersoma represented the consideration for which a sheriff received his office with its opportunities for emolument. The arrangement was sometimes made for a period of five years, the original recorded instance of this being the shrievalty of Robert de Stanley in Staffordshire, which apparently covers the interval between 1123 and 1128. The payment made was heavy and varied in individual cases. The arrangement was