the office of shire-reeve or sheriff was created by
Sheriff The word sheriff is a contraction of the term "shire reeve". The term, from the Old English scÄ«rgerefa, designated a royal official responsible for keeping the peace (a "reeve") throughout a shire or county on behalf of the king.[2] The term was preserved in England notwithstanding the Norman Conquest. From the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the term spread to several other regions, at an early point to Scotland, latterly to Ireland and to the United States.
J. R. R. Tolkien's influences Some locations and characters were inspired by Tolkien's childhood in Birmingham, where he first lived near Sarehole Mill, and later near Edgbaston Reservoir.[70] There are also hints of the Black Country, which is within easy reach of north west Edgbaston. This shows in such names as "Underhill", and the description of Saruman's industrialization of Isengard and The Shire is explicitly stated by Tolkien to have been based on the industrialization of England.[71] It has also been suggested that The Shire and its surroundings were influenced by the Iron Age and Roman mineral workings and remains which Tolkien saw in 1929 when working with archaeologists Tessa and Mortimer Wheeler at Lydney Park in the Forest of Dean;[72] or alternatively were based on the countryside around Stonyhurst College in Lancashire where he frequently stayed during the 1940s.[73]