According to the Venetian ambassador, Cornwall was ‘a wild spot where no human being ever came, save the few boors who inhabited’ the desolate place. It is clear that in the county and everywhere else the intermeshing of local interests, traditions and lordships moderated the impact of royal rulership. Yet it is just as clear that by the fourteenth century the tendrils of royal government had long stretched into every corner of the kingdom, with the men who held the main county offices serving as the Crown's agents in the locality. In the far south west, the intertwined offices of the royal shire and the comital-ducal franchise simultaneously helped to bestow coherence upon Cornwall itself while integrating the county into the kingdom.

The Sheriff-Stewards

The sheriff was the oldest shire office with the broadest responsibilities. Although shrieval authority had been eroded since the Anglo-Norman period, the post still retained an impressive range of powers. Within his bailiwick the sheriff enjoyed administrative omni-competence, with the preservation of royal rights forming the mainspring of his duties. The earl-duke held the shrievalty of Cornwall in fee, however, even though that the county had paid King John and Henry III for charters enshrining shrieval elections, charters that Earl Richard was later to repudiate. It followed that until 1376 the earlduke appointed a deputy to act as sheriff on his behalf, also employing this man as his steward in Cornwall. Standing at the apex of the local administration of comital-ducal prerogatives, the steward oversaw the lordship's manors, stannaries and boroughs, along with the county court itself. While the sheriff- steward received a handsome annuity for his labours, some £60 under the earldom and £40 during the Black Prince's tenure, those who held the post perennially failed to raise the enormous dues required of them.

Although lordly rights to the shrievalty marked Cornwall out as distinctive, the county was by no means the only shire to be overseen in this way by a seigniorial sheriff. In the north west, for example, successive earls and dukes of Lancaster appointed the sheriff of Lancashire to defend their local interests. Enjoying yet greater powers over the shrievalty in his palatinate of Durham, the bishop there concurrently bestowed the shrievalty and escheatorship on the same man.