8 - Henry VII and the Palatinate

Summary

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 ‘founded’ the court of Star Chamber to effect his attack on the nobles. Yet recent historiography still emphasises the power and intrusiveness of Henry’s agents and especially his Council Learned in the Law. This chapter questions whether this intrusiveness altered the pattern of politics in Cheshire in the way that it apparently did in Essex or the Thames Valley. Cheshire’s contribution to the victory and survival of Henry Tudor, organised through the Stanley family, meant that palatine privileges were exercised for the county’s benefit in the early part of the reign; and, although Henry’s destruction of Sir William Stanley ushered in a period during which Cheshire’s resources were exploited ruthlessly, this was done through the mechanisms of the palatinate, first through the marcher council and later through men recruited directly from the Cheshire gentry. Under Henry VII, therefore, Cheshire witnessed an intensification of royal lordship through the palatinate, not its destruction by a centralising monarch.

The 1480s saw Cheshire politics heavily influenced by the Stanley family. Sir William Stanley was developing a strong position in the Dee valley lordships and, as chamberlain of the county, occupied a commanding position in Cheshire’s administration. Thomas, Lord Stanley, was the justice of Cheshire and a major office-holder in Macclesfield hundred. Sir John Stanley of Alderley and Wever, the third son of the first Lord Stanley, had recently established himself in Cheshire. James Stanley was archdeacon of Chester between 1478 and 1485. The Cheshire stock of the family, from Hooton, had held the county shrievalty in the 1460s. If originally challenged by the Council in the Marches of Wales, it therefore seemed that Stanley power might now be accommodated and consolidated by it.