IV.—A Defence of the Liberties of Chester, 1450

Extract

The defence of the liberties of Chester, which I am introducing to your notice to-night, is a defence by what we should call to-day constitutional methods. Herein it is exceptional for those times, which were used rather to the rough-and-ready defensive operations of the sword. For when William the Conqueror granted the earldom of Chester to his nephew Hugh Lupus, he granted it to him “to hold by the sword as freely as he held all England by the crown.” And if there is in this grant an allusion to the right of the Earl of Chester to carry the curtana (or sword of justice) at the Royal Coronation, there is most assuredly a further and fuller reference to the unceasing vigilance and activity which the earls had to exercise in the defence of their city against the depredations of the Welsh and the protection of the West of England from the incursions of those turbulent people.