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"They, of all England, to ancient customs cleave:" Cheshire’s Privileged Autonomy and Tudor and Stuart Politics by Antony Tomlin A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of the University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Joint Master’s Program Department of History University of Manitoba/University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba Copyright © 2018 by Antony Tomlin Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………… Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………. Introduction………………………………………………………………………...1 Chapter 1: Sword of Dignity……………………………………………………...39 Chapter 2: Jurisdiction…………………………………………………………….77 Chapter 3: Taxation……………………………………………………………….93 Chapter 4: Militant Neutrality…………………………………………………...135 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..157 Abstract Provincial autonomy in the competitive atmosphere of evolving ideas surrounding country, realm, and nation in late medieval and early-modern Britain is investigated through distinct and variegated notions of negotiated political deference to the authority of the English Crown and its Parliament. The Palatinate of Cheshire serves as an example to argue a tradition of independently negotiated county level structures for taxation and law created degrees of customary autonomy reinforcing the localized rejection of a single nation state. Historiographical debates surrounding early-modern conceptions about the nature of the state are challenged to argue for provincial autonomy founded upon custom and negotiation claimed and exerted by county inhabitants to a greater extent than previously recognised. I contend that early-modern communities locally recognized the composite structure and authority of the realm under the Crown and its advisors, but rejected the corporate idea that all counties collectively form a ‘nation’ as one political body. Acknowledgements To reach this moment of saying ‘Thank-you’ would not have happened if I had not benefitted immeasurably from the help of others. First, I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Faculty of Graduate Studies at the University of Manitoba for funding my studies in the Joint Masters’ Program of the University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg. I was fortunate to receive the Dr. James Burns Award, and support from the Dr. James Burns Graduate Research Assistance fund, without which I would not have been able to travel for research – for that assistance, I am most grateful. Thank you. Second, I would like to thank the members of the faculty and staff at the Department of History in the universities of Manitoba and Winnipeg for their unfailing support of my efforts and their gently guiding hands. I am especially grateful for the encouragement of Dr. Roisin Cossar, whose infectious enthusiasm for teaching and learning ‘about stuff’ propelled me into the history department in the first place. Special thanks must go to Dr. Erik Thomson for his supervision of my thesis and patient corralling of my ideas – at times it must have felt like herding cats! But, I may not have completed this without his patient guidance and focussed energy. So, thank-you Erik. Finally, my greatest debt and deepest thank-you is to my wonderful wife Ardythe for her outstanding patience and personal endurance for listening to my theories and caring for our children with equal enthusiasm. I would not have made it this far without her. Antony Tomlin May 2018 Introduction As the heir to the childless Elizabeth I, queen of England, in 1603 James VI of Scotland became James I of England, and the head of a new composite monarchy: the three Stuart kingdoms – England, Scotland, and Ireland. He believed himself to be the founder of Great Britain, as in him and through his progeny the crowns of the kingdoms of Scotland and England were conjoined. However, the amalgamation of such politically and religiously divergent kingdoms, and culturally and socially diverse peoples, was to prove more difficult and elusive than either he or his successor, his son Charles I, had imagined. The three kingdoms would not be formally united until the Act of Union of 1707, but historians have often privileged the notion that after Elizabeth the three kingdoms of the Stuarts ushered in the era of British history. However, before the Civil Wars, not only were the three kingdoms not part of an unified British nation, but England, and the other kingdoms, were also not entirely unified in themselves. England was far from a unified state under the governance of a centralized legislature; there were county communities exercising local autonomous rights and privileges within the realm: the County Palatine of Cheshire, for example. Therefore, the perspective of previous historians, privileging explanations of a dawning ‘Britishness,’ has revealed a void in the analysis of social and governmental structures and in the political atmosphere of early-modern England into which communities such as Cheshire have fallen. My research into that void exposes that government of England was more multi-layered than historians have previously suggested and, in the political atmosphere of early-Stuart England, channels of communication between local and centralised government were many and varied, leading to a much more complex system of government than the paradigm of the larger three kingdoms demonstrates. 1 To explore the historiographic void, this analysis will concentrate on the political relationships between Crown, Parliament, and county, to argue an alternate model for understanding the systems of social and governmental structures present in pre-1650s England. I have chosen to refrain from a larger ‘national’ historical perspective, but instead to concentrate my analysis on the administration of government in one significant county of the realm, Cheshire. Many people in Cheshire did not think it was odd to represent the county as different from England, as they knew the county to be governed in distinctive ways, with its own Parliament, in accordance with its own distinctive customs and history. It seems too, that many outside Cheshire recognised the distinctive and privileged identity the county had within the realm. Each of these perspectives will be considered in this analysis, as will the view of those who represented such distinctiveness as a destructive force for unity. In this thesis, the ideas of ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’ are studied through a close analysis of late-medieval and early-modern texts. That analysis is considered alongside evidence from other texts to suggest how these ideas may have been represented by their authors. This framework provides context to demonstrate the complex layering of political identities that existed in the period. On the one hand, it seems clear that Early-modern Cheshire-men (Cestrians) would not have use for the word ‘independence’ as it did not yet appear in their lexicon. Rather, they described themselves and their county as ‘distinct and separate’ from the Parliamentary governance of England. Therefore, in this text I have used sparingly words such as ‘independent’ or ‘independence,’ choosing to describe the divisions within the realm of the English monarch as the medieval or early-modern people themselves did. On the other hand, ‘Autonomy’ or ‘autonomous’ were also not words used by early-modern commentators. However, where ‘independence’ has a clear modern political meaning, ‘autonomy’ is more 2 elastic. ‘Autonomy’ seems to capture the early-modern sense of how the relationship between Cheshire and the English Crown worked, and suitably describes for the modern reader the range of words and expressions people themselves used. Accordingly, I have used ‘autonomy’ to describe the capacity by which I think late-medieval and early-modern Cestrians exerted influence on their lives through rights and privileges granted them by their lord, often the monarch (in Cheshire’s case, the earl of Chester). Such rights and privileges enabled them to make decisions for themselves, individually or collectively, about their everyday lives, “distinct and separate” of other polities and without interference from any central authority below that of the king, having the freedom to govern themselves or control their county’s own affairs within the realm. It was the monarch with whom they negotiated their autonomous status, to whom they complained if any interference occurred, and within the realm of the Crown that they lived. Historically, as a County Palatinate, Cheshire enjoyed rights and privileges from the English Crown not provided to other counties. These rights and privileges afforded Cheshire its own autonomous governmental and legislative structures from the time of the Norman Conquest, if not before, and provided its citizenry with exemptions from the king’s Parliamentary taxes: the king’s writ did not run there, or when it did, the king acted as the earl and the people received it as such. In return for tax exemption, as a border or perhaps ‘buffer’ county between England and Wales, Cheshire provided the English with protection from Welsh invasion. Cestrians1 were “neither truly English nor truly Welsh,” and when travelling spoke of leaving the “countrey [sic] of Cheshire” and going to the “countrey [sic] of England.”2 Cheshire was selected for this thesis because of its unusual status as a County Palatinate, its significant position as a border county 1 Cestrian is the name given to an inhabitant or citizen of Cheshire. It is derived from the early name for the county, Cestre. Cestre was used in contemporary official records until at least 1742. 2 Robert W. Barrett, Jr., Against All England: Regional Identity and Cheshire Writing, 1195-1656 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 2: Barrett interprets the first-person account by Lucian the Monk written at the end of the twelfth century; Joan Beck, Tudor Cheshire (Chester: Cheshire Community Council, 1969), 3. 3 between England and Wales, and the fortunate survival of large quantities of the county’s administrative records. Cheshire’s County Record Office and the county archives are located in Chester, not far from the castle, but many of Cheshire’s records are no longer kept there.

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