Dr. Stubbs writes: "A measure dictated still more distinctly by this policy may be traced in the list of sheriffs for A.D. 1130. Richard Basset and Aubrey de Vere, a judge and a royal chamberlain, act as joint sheriffs in no less than eleven counties; Geoffrey de Clinton, Miles of Gloucester, William of Pont l'Arche, the treasurer, are also sheriffs as well as justices of the king's court" (i. 892). But this statement requires a certain qualification. For though they appear as sheriffs (vicecomites) on the Roll, and have been always so reckoned, we gather from one passage in the record that they were, strictly speaking, not vicecomites, but custodes. The difference is this. By the former a county was held ad firmam; by the latter it was held in custodia. In the Inquest of Sheriffs (1170) the distinction is clearly recognized. We there find the expressions used: "sive eos tenuerint ad firmam, sive in custodia." By the true sheriff (vicecomes) the county was, in fact, leased. He, as its farmer (firmarius), was responsible for its annual rent (firma). It was thus, virtually, a speculation of his own, and the profit, if any, was his. But by a process exactly analogous to that of a modern landlord taking an estate into his own hands, and farming it himself through a bailiff, the king could, under special circumstances, take a county into his own hands, and farm it himself through a bailiff (custos). Henry II., in his twentieth year, did this with London, putting in his own custodes in the place of the regular sheriffs, and, in later days, Henry III. and Edward I. did the same. It was this, I contend, that Henry I. had done with the counties in question. The proof of it is found in this passage:—

"Ricardus basset et Albericus de Ver reddunt Compotum de M marcis argenti de superplus Comitatuum, quas habent in custodia" (p. 63).

Here we have the very same phrase as that in the Inquest of Sheriffs, while the enormous "superplus" of a thousand marcs must represent the excess of receipts over the amount required for the firmæ, which excess, the counties being "in custodia," fell to the share of the Crown. Thus we obtain the right explanation of the employment in this capacity of royal officers, and we further get a glimpse, which we would not lose, of one of those administrative changes which, as under Henry II., tell of a system of government as yet empirical and imperfect.

It is clear that this measure was no mere development, but a sudden and unforeseen step. For in the case of Essex, the scene of our story, William de Eynsford ("Æinesford"), a Kentish landowner, had leased the county for five years, from Michaelmas, 1128, the consideration he paid for his lease being a hundred marcs (£66 13s. 4d.). Early in the second year of his lease, that is between Michaelmas, 1129, and Easter, 1130, he must have been superseded by the royal custodes, on the king taking the county into his own hands. He, however, received "compensation for disturbance," four-fifths of his hundred marcs ("de Gersoma") being remitted to him in consideration of his losing four out of his five years' lease. All this we learn from the brief record in the Roll (p. 63).

Another point that should be here noticed is the use of the term "Gersoma." Retrospectively, its use in this Roll illustrates its use in Domesday. In those cases, where a firmarius was willing, as a speculation, to give for an estate more than its fixed rental (firma), he gave the excess "de Gersoma," either in the form of a lump sum, or in that of an annual payment.