Conclusion

Summary

This book began by asserting the importance of the palatinate of Chester and its privileges in the fifteenth century. The surviving petitions of the county suggest that the people of the palatinate believed their county to be an entire political system of itself with its own parliament, council, courts and administration. The first part of the book then demonstrated that this autonomous system was still a reality in the early Tudor period. The culture of centre and locality justified and glorified the palatinate. Taxation, a crucial point in the nexus of crown–locality relations, was still agreed through a local parliament and paid in the traditional manner; and the council of the earl of Chester was potent enough to tap the demand for equitable justice, giving birth to the Chester exchequer.

It has not been the intention of this book, however, to argue that nothing changed during the early Tudor period in Cheshire. Such an argument would ignore the shifting patterns of litigation by Cheshire people, the legislative changes that affected the shire and the way that royal patronage influenced the character of the body of officers who administered the county. Part II thus concluded that Cheshire developed a different relationship with royal government. By 1560 Cheshire people were becoming more accustomed to litigation in chancery or Star Chamber, their officers were more frequently courtiers or members of the Council in the Marches of Wales and new laws meant writs ran in the king’s name. JPs presided over quarter sessions in the county, and Cheshire MPs sat at Westminster. These changes were, however, limited and never intended to destroy the special status of the Chester palatinate. Neither political imperatives, nor administrative momentum, nor the imperial ideal present particularly in the work of Thomas Cromwell were to result in the incorporation of the palatinate. Cromwell’s ideal was not a vision of uniformity but of supreme sovereignty projected into varied jurisdictions. Neither in its humanist elements nor in its British roots did it seriously depart from a vision of the king’s territories as an association of varied particular and particularist elements. Because of this, many of the changes were made for reasons that related only indirectly to Cheshire, and their impact was unpredictable and could be shaped by local people. The Chester palatinate as a cultural, social and political institution emerged in the 1560s altered but still formidable.