Q: What is the Capital of the Shire?
ANSWER: In the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote that Michel Delving on the White Downs was the “chief township” of the Shire; that would seem to settle the question. As the largest town of the Shire, Michel Delving’s Mayor administered the Shire’s postal service and Shirrifs, to the latter of which were also attached the Bounders, who minded the borders of the Shire. But the Mayor of Michel Delving was not the ruler of the Shire, or even its “head of state”.
Technically, as a matter of law, the hereditary Thains held the authority of the old kings, an office which the clan chieftains of the Shire had established after Arthedain/Arnor was destroyed. The Thain would have been as close to a “ruler” as the Shire would have known, although his powers were limited. The Thain led the Shire-moot, which would have been a meeting of the family heads or clan-chiefs, and only the Thain could raise the Shire-muster, an official call-to-arms for the Shire-folk.
So while Michel Delving was the largest town and more-or-less the administrative center of the Shire, is it correct to say that it was the capital of the Shire? Tolkien refrained from using the word “capital” to refer to any part of the Shire. He may have had a philological reason not to use the word (which, when used to refer to a “capital city” only came into practice in the 1660s). The word capital is ultimately derived from a Latin word capitalis meaning “of the head”.
It could also be that since there isn’t a modern English word derived from an Old English word for “capital city”, Tolkien chose to avoid using any special designation for Michel Delving (or Great Smials, the home of the Took, who was at the time of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings the Thain of the Shire). There was an Old English word, heafodstol, which literally meant “chieftain’s seat” or “chief’s throne”. Some dictionaries translate heafod alone as “capital city” but I suspect that reflects an idiosyncratic adaptation of an older term (but keep in mind that I am not a linguist and my knowledge of Old English and its evolution is quite limited).
The Great Smials were clearly the Thain’s place of residence and thus the closest thing in the Shire to an Anglo-Saxon heafodstol but since the Thain did not actually govern the Shire Great Smials cannot be deemed a capital city, at least not in the sense that London or Washington, D.C. are capital cities. And yet, neither can Michel Delving really claim the authority of the king; it provided services to the rest of the Shire but those services did not necessarily entail the making of laws, representing the Shire beyond its borders, or the exercise of other duties associated with a ruler or his appointed representative.
Hence, Tolkien very cleverly divided the authority and functions of a true ruler between two offices that were conferred through special elections. One office, the Thainship, was hereditary but nonetheless owed its authority to the electorate comprised of the family heads; the other office, the Mayor of Michel Delving (sometimes also called the Mayor of the Shire), was non-hereditary and owed its authority to a popular election at the Free Fair on the White Downs. Virtually no political authority was conferred upon the Mayor (until Aragorn made the Master of Buckland, the Mayor of the Shire, and the Thain counselors of the North Kingdom).
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