Bailli
A
bailli or
bailiff was the king’s administrative representative during the
ancien régime in northern France, where the
bailli was responsible for the application of justice and control of the administration and local finances in his
baillage.
Bailli was derived from the generic term
bailiff, used all over Europe to mean a personal agent or steward: the equivalent agent in the Languedoc was the
seneschal. Philip II Augustus of France, an able and ingenious administrator who founded the central institutions on which the French monarchy's system of power would be based, prepared the expansion of the royal demesne through his appointment of
baillis in the king's land, based on medieval fiscal and tax divisions which had been used by earlier sovereign princes. In Flanders, the count appointed similar bailiffs, called the
baljuw — a term directly derived from
bailli.