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Originally in Anglo-Saxon England the reeve was a senior official with local responsibilities under the Crown e.g. as the chief magistrate of a town or district. Subsequently, after the Norman conquest, it was an office held by a man of lower rank, appointed as manager of a manor and overseer of the peasants. In this later role, historian H. R. Loyn observes, "he is the earliest English specialist in estate management."〔Loyn, ''Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest'', 2nd ed. 1991:356.〕 ==Anglo-Saxon England== Before the Conquest, a reeve (Old English ''gerefa''; similar the titles greve/gräfe in Low Saxon languages of Northern Germany) was an administrative officer who generally ranked lower than the ealdorman or earl. The Old English word ''gerefa'' was originally a general term, but soon acquired a more technical meaning. Land was divided into a large number of hides - an area containing enough farmable land to support one household. Ten hides constituted a tithings, and the families living upon it (in theory, 10 families) were obliged to undertake an early form of neighbourhood watch, by a collective responsibility system called ''frankpledge''. Tithings were organised into groups of 10, called ''hundreds'' due to containing 100 hides; in modern times, these ancient hundreds still mostly retain their historic boundaries, despite each generally now containing vastly more than a mere 100 families. Each hundred was supervised by a constable, and groups of hundreds were combined to form shires, with each shire being under the control of an earl. Each unit had a court, and an officer to implement decisions of that court: the reeve. Thus different types of reeves were attested, including high-reeve, town-reeve, port-reeve, shire-reeve (predecessor to the sheriff〔(Online Etymology Dictionary:sheriff )〕), reeve of the hundred, and the reeve of a manor. The word is often rendered in Latin as ''prefectus'' (Modern English ''prefect''), by the historian Bede, and some early Anglo-Saxon charters. West-Saxon charters prefer to reserve the term ''prefectus'' for the ealdormen (earls) themselves. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Reeve (England)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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