The
historic counties of England were originally used as areas for administering justice and organising the
militia, overseen by a
sheriff. From
Tudor times onwards a
lord-lieutenant was appointed to oversee the militia, taking some of the sheriff's functions. Certain towns and cities were
counties corporate, which gave them the right to appoint their own sheriffs and hold their own courts. Whilst in theory the counties corporate could have had separate lieutenants appointed for them, in practice all of them except
London shared a lieutenant with the wider county from which they had been created. London had instead a
commission of lieutenancy, headed by the
Lord Mayor. The long-standing practice of appointing lieutenants jointly to the wider county and any counties corporate it contained was formalised by the Militia Act 1882. Apart from the inclusion of the counties corporate, the counties for the purposes of lieutenancy generally corresponded to the judicial counties. The exception was Yorkshire, which was one judicial county, having a single
Sheriff of Yorkshire, but from 1660 onwards each of Yorkshire's three
ridings had its own lieutenant. In 1889, elected
county councils were established under the
Local Government Act 1888, taking over the administrative functions of the
quarter sessions. Certain towns and cities were made
county boroughs, independent from the county councils. In counties where the quarter sessions had been held separately for different parts of the county, such as the
Parts of Lincolnshire, each part was given its own county council. The area administered by a county council was called an
administrative county. As such, some of the judicial or lieutenancy counties comprised several administrative counties and county boroughs. The
Ordnance Survey adopted the term 'geographical county' to describe the widest definition of the county. In most cases this was the lieutenancy county; the exceptions were Yorkshire, where the judicial county was larger on account of it being split into its three ridings for lieutenancy purposes, and the
County of London where the administrative county was larger on account of the City of London and the rest of the county being separate for both judicial and lieutenancy purposes. In 1974, administrative counties and county boroughs were abolished, and a new system of
metropolitan and
non-metropolitan counties was introduced instead. Sheriffs were renamed 'high sheriffs' and both they and the lieutenants were appointed to the new versions of the counties. The counties of
Avon,
Cleveland and
Humberside, each of which had only been created in 1974, were all abolished in 1996. They were divided into
unitary authorities; legally these are also non-metropolitan counties. As part of these reforms, it was decided to define counties for the purposes of lieutenancy differently from the local government counties in some cases, effectively reverting to the pre-1974 arrangements for lieutenancies. Whereas the lieutenancies had been defined slightly differently from the shrieval counties prior to 1974, it was decided in 1996 that the high sheriffs and lieutenants should be appointed to the same areas. Regulations amending the
Sheriffs Act 1887 and specifying the areas for the appointment of lieutenants were accordingly brought in with effect from 1 April 1996. The regulations were then consolidated into the
Lieutenancies Act 1997. When Herefordshire, Rutland and Worcestershire were re-established as local government counties in 1997 and 1998 no amendment was made to the 1997 Act regarding them, allowing them to also serve as their own lieutenancy areas. The lieutenancy counties have not changed in area since 1998, although the definitions of which local government counties are included in each lieutenancy have been amended to reflect new unitary authorities being created since 1997. == Shrieval counties ==