Steven Till

Reeve [reev]
[gerefa (Old English), praepositus, prepositus (Latin)]

1) A royal official, or a manor official appointed by the lord or elected by the peasants.
(MEDIEV-L. Medieval Terms)

2) Manorial overseer, usually a villager elected by tenants of the manor.
(Gies, Joseph and Francis. Life in a Medieval Castle, 231)

3) Officer responsible for the general management of a manor (usually selected from among the manor’s tenants).
(Bennett, Judith M. Women in the Medieval English Countryside, 234)

4) The lord’s official on the manor who supervised labour dues and renders owed by peasants.
(Wood, Michael. Domesday: A Search for the Roots of England, 214)

5) Principal manorial official under the bailiff, always a villein.
(Gies, Frances and Joseph. Life in a Medieval Village, 245)

6) The usual word for an O.E. official, including the scirgerefa (sheriff) and portgerefa (port reeve, town reeve); continued to be used in towns after the Norman Conquest (later sometimes interchangeable with “bailiff”), generally for the officials responsible for paying the king’s or lord’s dues.
(Reynolds, Susan. An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns, 200)

Excerpt from the Medieval Sourcebook: Manorial Management & Organization, c. 1275

And if there be anything lost in the court or without, or stolen, whether it be live or dead, small or great, where the lord can have any kind of loss, either by fire or any other way, the lord must take (the value) from the reeve and the reeve must take it from those of the court who may be to blame. And make it known that all the servants of the court, men and women, ought to obey the reeve, because he must answer for their doings, and the reeve must put those in the court for whose doings he will be answerable. And the steward must see that the reeve has good pledges for all those in the court who are put there by him, and if the lord receive any damage by the reeve, and the reeve cannot make good the damage, all those of the township who elected him shall make up for him the amount he cannot pay.

*term definitions retrieved from Netserf’s Medieval Glossary (http://www.netserf.org/Glossary)

Filed under: Middle Ages History, Medieval Glossary, Medieval History on October 23rd, 2009