6 - Parliament and Legislation

Summary

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 sometimes careless – application of theory. This produced local determination to become involved with the English parliament, largely to prevent further damaging interference. This was done with some success: the legislation in question was in any case never designed to obliterate the Cheshire palatinate.

Before the Acts of Union

The English parliament in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had shown remarkable respect for the liberties of Cheshire. For example, an act of 1429 against malicious indictments or appeals of persons in one county who were dwelling in another had attempted a remedy by offering treble damages to those who successfully prosecuted such offences. This was specifically not to apply to indictments or appeals taken within Cheshire. The autonomy of Cheshire was preserved, but the problem of proceedings against a defendant in a county ‘in which the said Lieges be not, nor at any time were, conversant nor dwelling’ was unhelpfully treated as a problem of criminal intent, not administrative confusion in an increasingly complex society. The exclusion of the king’s writ was still being insisted upon in the early part of Henry VIII’s reign when, more constructively, an act provided that notice of such proceedings should be given in any county where a defendant might reasonably be expected to be living, even if this was not the place mentioned in the proceedings. This only applied to places where the king’s writ ran, however: in counties like Cheshire where it did not, the proclamation in any action where process of outlawry lay was to be directed to the sheriff of a neighbouring county.