The sheriff was the king’s man in local matters, the rough equivalent of the chief constable today and was kept very busy. On average, he would receive about 120 royal writs – the equivalent of policy directives from central government – and would have to act on them. If we have the impression that all the Sheriff of Nottingham had to do was to chase Robin Hood all day, the outlaw was either a far worse problem than anyone has realised or the writers of such stories had no idea what a sheriff actually did. That said, the sheriff had huge powers and few landowners would go against him. He had
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Sherif explain
