Chief’s Men

A group of Men brought into the Shire by Lotho Sackville-Baggins - the self-appointed Chief Shirriff - to keep the Shire-hobbits under the power of the Chief. When they first arrived in the Shire, they would also undertake tasks such as building, but soon they abandoned work of this kind and roamed the Shire, stealing and burning. Those Hobbits who dared stand in their way found themselves imprisoned in Michel Delving's Lockholes.

The origins of these Men are uncertain, and Frodo Baggins guessed at first that they had come out of the Wild, but hints that there were Half-orcs among them imply that they had in fact originated from among Saruman's followers in Isengard. Eventually Saruman came to the Shire and took power for himself. He was commonly known there as 'Sharkey' and thus the Chief's Men later became 'Sharkey's Men'.

When the Travellers returned to the Shire, they roused the Shire-folk to rise up in rebellion, and at the Battle of Bywater some seventy of the Chief's Men were killed. These seem to have formed the bulk of the Men in the Shire; after this defeat, they caused no further trouble, and Frodo and his companions were able to deal with Saruman (or 'Sharkey') and bring his time of misrule to an end.