Recent accounts of community, especially the county community, in fourteenth- , fifteenth- , and sixteenth-century England place little emphasis on its cultural and ideological background, concentrating instead on its social, administrative or economic foundations.¹ What attention there has been to the culture of community has been restricted to local histories and the portrayal of arms.² Yet there are at least two grounds for suggesting that an exploration of this culture in Cheshire might be informative. Study of Brittany in the later medieval period has shown how a sense of community was deliberately bolstered through literature, inquiries into local rights, saints...

‘National’ taxation of England began early in the thirteenth century, and although Cheshire was intermittently included until 1292, by the crucial period of 1340–60 the shire was not part of the ‘national’ bargain of taxation and consent that was central to the late medieval English polity.² This chapter explores how Cheshire’s distinct position continued to be demonstrated in the way that it negotiated and paid tax in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In place of English parliamentary taxation Cheshire payed a subsidy called the mise, developed in the mid-fourteenth century after English lay taxation was allowed to lapse.³ The...

The importance of the palatinate in the day-to-day politics of Cheshire is also demonstrated by a study of the earl of Chester’s council operating in Chester and the development from this council of an equity court, the exchequer. The Chester palatinate will be seen to be a vital institution, not just in the background of political ideas or in relatively infrequently-levied taxation, but in the informal flow of lordship in the shire.

Potentially the dominant influence on the political life of the county palatine of Chester was its earl. The pattern of his lordship in the county, supported by his...

An important element in Cheshire’s autonomous position was its judicial independence. In theory, its courts represented a microcosm of the courts at Westminster: there was no need for any Cheshire person to take a case there except in cases of error.¹ The exclusion of Cheshire cases from the central equity courts was less clear, however. A suitor might exploit the opportunities for parallel actions at Westminster or use the courts there to challenge a case already decided in Cheshire. The extent to which such use was made is one measure of the degree to which Cheshire’s autonomous institutions were working...

In the fifteenth century Cheshiremen did not consider themselves bound by parliaments outside their territory, as their petitions showed. Yet the English parliament could potentially have a powerful influence on Cheshire. This chapter will demonstrate the initial respect shown by the English parliament for the palatinate’s privileges and the limited interest expressed by Cheshiremen in the English parliament. It will then examine the way in which English statutes began to affect the county in the 1530s. This interference was not determined by a considered understanding of local circumstances and needs, nor by local demand, but by the general – and...

Cheshire’s judicial system lay outside usual English legal jurisdiction. Those who ran that system were therefore extremely important to the life of the county and in changes to government policy towards the palatinate. The involvement of courtiers or others linked to the central administration was often the subject of controversy in Cheshire and elsewhere.¹ This chapter will consider whether in the early Tudor period local administrative posts were taken by outsiders or by local men with strong interests at court resulting in a diminution in the county’s autonomy.² It will argue that the officers of the shire remained largely local...

Henry VII has been credited with the instigation of the Tudor policy of centralisation. From Bacon’s History in the early seventeenth century, Henry’s alleged restoration of good government has incorporated an element of the extension of central control. It was Henry, the story runs, who conquered the unruly independence of the barons; it was Henry who enhanced the power and efficiency of the central government. The historiography has taken different directions with the passing of the decades. It is no longer accepted that Henry replaced a dependence on the nobility with a new alliance with the bourgeoisie, or that he...

During the ministries of Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, the palatinate of Chester underwent unprecedented change. This chapter examines how Wolsey’s lust for power and determination to achieve glory for his master led him to intervene in Cheshire with lasting, if not necessarily intentional, results; and how more urgent pressures, the need for religious uniformity, fears of civil war and treason, and the urgency of raising revenue, compelled Cromwell to attempt greater systematisation and to integrate the palatinate more fully into the king’s dominions. Behind these practical imperatives, at least in Cromwell’s mind, there operated an ideology of ‘imperial’ government...

Before 1536, it has been argued here, the palatinate was the major factor in local political life. It has further been argued that the legislative changes of 1536 were not triggered by local political developments. These changes could have influenced local political life, yet 1536 was not a decisive watershed in Cheshire politics. Much had been destroyed – the immediate nexus of William Brereton’s power and, more broadly, some of the features of the county’s palatine privileges. Between 1536 and 1560 the effects of this destruction worked themselves out. The strife engendered by the disappearance of William Brereton gradually subsided;...