farfel_n03_088_175

France proper was divided into duchies, counties, seignories,
seneschalties, and bailliages (bailiwicks) governed - in order of
increasing dependence uopn the king - by dukes, counts,
seigncurs, seneschals (royal stewards) and bailiffs. This loose
aggregation, already called Francis in the 9th C. was in
diverse degrees, and with many limitations, subject to the French King.
-Baillage. In medieval rural lordships a familiar
memorial officer known as the bailiff often acted as
a manager of an estate. When employed by the French
crown in the 12th C, the bailli was a salaried judicial
officer who inspected the work of the prevot, who
formed the revenues of the royal domain and rendered
justice at the local level. In 1204 Phillip II gained
possession of Normandy where bailli had begun to be assoc.
with a geographical area. Over the next 15 yrs. the bailli in
royal lands gradually lost the character of an itinerant
justice and became the administrator of a district called the
baillage. Whereas the early 13th C. baillis were drawn mainly
from the middling nobility of the old royal domain in the Ile
de France, many of them in the late 14th C. were natives of
their baillage. This district and its southern counterpart
the senechausee, remained the basic provincial
administrative unit of late medieval France.