Tudor Chester

In English history the Tudor period begins with the death of Richard III (22 August 1485), which itself is taken as the end of the Medieval period. The period boundary is somewhat arbitary and also somewhat politicised. The Medieval period was seen by some historians as a relatively primitive time which came before the Renaissance and was associated with backwardness, superstition, ignorance and brutality. However the Medieval period is littered with what might be considered false starts of the Renaissance. The boundary has been contentious from the time itself as Henry VII hired chroniclers to portray his reign as a "modern age" with its dawn in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field. By portraying Richard as a hunch-backed tyrant who usurped the throne by killing his nephews, the Tudor historians attached a sense of myth to the battle: it became an epic clash between good and evil with a satisfying moral outcome.



There are however a few useful markers, which, although scattered over a period of time, can be seen as indicative of significant change:


 * Introduction of gunpowder: Richard III took cannon to the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 but died in what was an "old-fashioned" cavalry charge with the objective of personally defeating Henry Tudor. Gunpowder was by no means new, having been known since Roger Bacon (1267), and taking-off rapidly after about 1320. The end of the 15th Century saw innovations such as the trigger for firearms and the placement of cannons on ships. Henry VII's ships, the Regent and Sovereign, were among the first to carry enough cannons to deliver a "ship killing" blow at a distance.


 * Improvements in navigation and discovery of the Americas: in 1470, the Florentine astronomer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli suggested to King Afonso V of Portugal that sailing west across the Atlantic would be a quicker way to reach the Spice Islands, Cathay, and Cipangu than the then only hypothetical route around Africa (only discovered in 1488), but Afonso rejected his proposal. The Columbus brothers eventually got funding for a westward voyage (having been turned down by Henry VII).


 * Growth of printing: nine days after the Battle of Bosworth, William Caxton published Thomas Malory's story about chivalry and death by betrayal — Le Morte d'Arthur — seemingly as a response to the circumstances of Richard III's death. Caxton had introduced the printing press to England around 1476 and its introduction did much to fix the English language on a standard dialect.


 * The Reformation: this is normally associated with Henry VIII, but has much earlier roots. The priesthood of all believers downplayed the need for saints or priests to serve as mediators, and mandatory clerical celibacy was ended. The spread of Gutenberg's printing press provided the means for the rapid dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular. Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484) established the practice of selling indulgences to be applied to the dead, thereby establishing a new stream of revenue with agents across Europe and infuriating reformers. In England, John Wycliffe questioned the privileged status of the clergy which had bolstered their powerful role in England and the luxury and pomp of local parishes and their ceremonies. Wycliffe was posthumously condemned as a heretic and his corpse exhumed and burned in 1428.

At the start of the Tudor period, as a result of its special status, Cheshire occupied a unique position in England: but it was in the sixteenth century, that Cheshire lost its independence. In 1500, Prince Arthur kept court at Chester Castle as Earl of Chester; the palatinate had its own judicial machinery; it was financially distinct and had its own exchequer (also based at Chester Castle); it had no justices of the peace, no visits from the assizes; it sent no representatives to parliament; and men spoke of crossing from Cheshire into England. The absence of any dominant noble family (such as the Norman earls) had resulted in the emergence of a powerful local gentry. The canons of the college of St Johns jealously preserved its title of cathedral and the bishops of Coventry and Lichfield continued to own a palace in Chester, retaining the additional title of "Bishop of Chester" which was used interchangeably until the formation of the Chester diocese in the sixteenth century.

By the reign of Elizabeth only the Palatine Courts were left. Cheshire accounted to the Crown, had justices of the peace, was part of the assize system and elected M.P.s like any other county. The change had not been unheralded; ever since the Crown annexed the earldom in 1237, the integration of the palatinate with the nation had been under way. But it was the sixteenth century which saw the decisive conclusion, after which the men of the county, or at least the elite, accepted that they were part of the English political nation.

Chester in 1485
In 1484 the citizens of Chester were moaning about the state of the River Dee and claimed that Chester had no merchant ship of its own and that the port was:


 * "wholly destroyed because no merchant ship had been able to approach within 12 miles for 60 years".

Richard III, who possibly visited Chester in that year, obligingly cut the annual tax on Chester from £50 to £30. There have been many reasons proposed for the decline of the port of Chester: the water has never been sufficient to scour out an adequate navigation channel through the deep glacial silt. Man has also probably contributed to the silting up of the Dee. At one time the Dee Mills, owned by the earls of Chester, operated 11 waterwheels and also constructed a weir across the river at Chester, which reduced the tidal limit and the scour of the river. It is also possible that upland deforestation in Wales altered drainage patterns and also contributed to the silting.

The Stanleys
Stanley Palace actually has little to do with the Stanleys who would decide the fate of Richard III. It was only built in 1591 and did not becopme the property of the Stanley's until some years after that, around 1621. These Stanley's did however have close links with Chester as well a considerable skill at steering a course through rapidly shifting politics. John Stanley had been a retainer of Richard II who then managed be maintain his fortunes under the Lancastians. Unlike many of the Cheshire gentry, he took the side of the king in the rebellion of the Percys. He was wounded in the throat at the Battle of Shrewsbury, but survived to be rewarded with the tenure of the Isle of Man in 1405. Curiously, John Stanley has been proposed as one of the possible authors of "Gawain and the Green Knight", which emerged at the end of Richard's reign and appears to have some connections with Chester (see: Cheshire Dialect).

Later Stanleys were just as deft. Chester was notionally on the Lancastrian side in the "Wars of the Roses" and in 1450 Sir Thomas Stanley (then Justice of Chester) called upon to supply troops to support the Lancastrians. In 1455 he mobilized a large force from Cheshire to help the Lancastrian cause, but arrived late for the Battle of St Albans (22nd May). In 1459 he turned up late for the Battle of Blore Heath. Prior to his return, the Stanleys had been communicating with the exiled Henry Tudor for some time and Tudor's strategy of landing in Wales and heading east into central England depended on the acquiescence of Sir William Stanley, as Chamberlain of Chester and north Wales, and by extension on that of Lord Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby himself. On hearing of the invasion, Richard III ordered the two Stanleys to raise the men of the region in readiness to oppose the invader. However, once it was clear that Tudor was marching unopposed through Wales, Richard ordered Lord Stanley to join him without delay.



According to the Crowland Chronicle, Lord Stanley excused himself on the grounds of illness, claiming that he was suffering from the "sweating sickness" (see: Pandemic), although by now Richard had firm evidence of the Stanleys’ complicity. After an unsuccessful bid to escape from court, Lord Strange (George Stanley) had confessed that he and his uncle, Sir William Stanley, had conspired with Henry Tudor. Richard proclaimed him as a traitor, and let it be known that Strange’s life was hostage for his father's loyalty in the coming conflict. William Stanley dismissed the threat with the words "I have other sons". Indeed, Richard allegedly issued orders for Strange’s execution on the battlefield at Bosworth Field, although in the event these were never carried out. The failure of Lord Stanley, to come to the aid of King Richard III at Bosworth contributed to King Richard's defeat. Lord Stanley, who was by then married to the future Henry VII's mother, Margaret Beaufort, is given a major role in Shakespeare's "Richard III". George Stanley's son was to survive as Thomas Stanley, 2nd Earl of Derby.

After Bosworth
In 1485 the citizens' sympathies seem to have been with the Tudors. Their mayor from 1484 to 1486, Sir John Savage (d. 1495), had close links with the Stanleys, and his son, also Sir John (d. 1492), led the left wing of Henry Tudor's forces at the Battle of Bosworth Field and was afterwards well rewarded (see this site for more information). The serjeant of the Bridgegate, Sir William Troutbeck, also fought for Henry at that battle. Richard III was abandoned by Lord Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby, Sir William Stanley, and Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland. Tradition holds that Richard III's final words were "treason ,treason, treason, treason, treason". Shakespeare messes-around with facts concerning the Battle of Bosworth in significant ways, he ignores the role of Thomas’s brother, William Stanley, who intervenes, according to the chronicles, with "three thousand tall men" to win the battle for Henry Tudor at the last minute. In fact, apart from a mention of him by Shakespeare in Act IV Scene 5, he ignores William Stanley altogether. In real history William Stanley was later executed: ten years after Bosworth he became involved in another plot (support of the pretender Perkin Warbeck), this time against the man whom he had helped to the crown. Warned in time, Henry had William Stanley seized, tried and beheaded. In the chronicles Richard is shown winning even the hand-to-hand struggle with Henry, until Stanley’s forces turn the tide. On stage, Richard is shown losing the battle before he meets Henry.

The following year Henry VII reduced the annual farm to £20 in perpetuity. The king visited Chester with his queen and his mother in 1493 or 1495, and in 1498 or 1499 his son Prince Arthur attended a performance of an Assumption Day play and presented a silver badge to the Smiths, Cutlers, and Plumbers' company. The citizens of Chester now claimed that the city was:


 * "thoroughly ruined .. nearly one quarter destroyed because access for shipping had been impossible for 200 years"

Note that the period over which navigation had been hampered has increased from 60 to 200 years.

After the treaty of Medina del Campo opened up trade with the Iberian peninsula in 1489, Spanish iron, and wine from Portugal, Spain, and Gascony became the basis for a dramatic expansion in Chester's overseas trade, which allowed other Mediterranean commodities to reach the city, and provided new markets for hides and cloth. Chester's trade with Spain focused on the Basque region and involved iron. Besides iron, small quantities of angora, silk and velvet, liquorice, train oil, woad, and Cordovan skins were sometimes carried. Trade with Portugal and Andalusia through the northern Spanish ports brought cork, dyestuffs, figs and raisins, litmus, pepper and herbs, oil, sugar, wax, and sweet wines to Chester from c. 1509.

Prince Arthur


Thomas Cowper was Page of Honour to Prince Arthur (19/20 September 1486 – 2 April 1502), Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester and Duke of Cornwall. As the eldest son and heir apparent of Henry VII of England, Arthur was viewed by contemporaries as the great hope of the newly established House of Tudor. His mother, Elizabeth of York, was the daughter of Edward IV, and his birth cemented the union between the House of Tudor and the House of York. Henry VII had risen to the throne of England with his victory over Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Henry's claim to the throne of England lacked almost all validity by heredity; his possession of the crown was primarily by right of conquest, and he faced a host of claimants still alive with arguably better legal claims. By contrast, their Most Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella were secure upon what was soon to be the united throne of Spain. They were looking for help against their hereditary enemy, France. Henry had a new son, the Spanish rulers a very young daughter; a marriage and alliance would help each. Henry would gain the acceptance of his position by a major foreign power, and the Spanish would obtain military help against France. Plans for Arthur's marriage began before his third birthday; he was installed as Prince of Wales two years later. At the age of eleven, he was formally betrothed to Catherine of Aragon. When Prince Arthur visted Chester from August 1498 until late Septeember it was only reasonable that he was accompanied by Thomas Cowper (and presumably others) to organise his movable household.

The "New British Traveller" (1819) described the Cowper family as follows:


 * The Cowpers of Chester descended from Thomas a younger son of the Cowpers of Strode in Sussex who was one of the gentlemen of the bed chamber in August 1498. Before the end of the year he married lsabella daughter and heiress of Richard Goodman Esq then Mayor of Chester. Their descendants have ever since continued in Chester and have repeatedly represented the City in Parliament served in all the offices of the Corporation &c The last male heir of this family died in July 1788 and on the death of his widow the house and estate descended to a branch of the Cholmondeleys who are related to the Cowpers by marriage.

There is some exaggeration here, as many other families appear far more often in the lists of Chester MP's and offices of the Corporation, while the Cowpers (with a few exceptions) play a relatively minor part. Thomas would however, as noted stay in Chester and marry a local girl. The mood in Chester at the time appears to have been upbeat. The Midsummer Watch Parade was first held during the mayoralty of Richard Goodman (in 1498) - organised by the City Guilds. There is an obvious difficulty in reconciling the dates of the visit of Prince Arthur to Chester (4 August 1498 - 19 Sept 1498) with the midsummer festivities during Goodman's mayorality, but it does indicate the nexus of significant events in which the origins of the watch parade is nested: the completion of a part of the Pentice, good progress on building the Abbey, an up-swing of trade with Spain, and of course the visit of the Prince.

The arrival of Thomas Cowper in Chester (1498) coincided with the final decline of feudalism. This was partly since the military shifted from armies consisting of the nobility and their serfs to professional fighters thus reducing the nobility's claim on power, but also because the Black Death had reduced the nobility's hold over the lower classes by increasing the cost of labour. Under the Normans land held from the king by knight service brought with it the obligation of the tenant to serve his lord for forty days in the field. Apart from the church, the king owned all the land, although the situation as regards the Earls of Chester was a little more complicated until Henry III took the Earldom back into royal hands. The decline of feudalism in the Earldom of Chester is reflected in the fact that Arthur Tudor came closest of all among the Earls of Chester of his time to reaching his majority - there were no adult Earls between the accession of Henry V (1413) and Henry Stuart's elevation to the Earldom in 1610 (Henry then promptly died of typhoid in 1612). Arthur's brother Henry VIII was created Earl of Chester in 1504, but was never invested and none of Henry VIII's children became Earl. Notably, there was only a titular Earl of Chester for only 21 of the 81 years from 1480 until the Restoration in 1560.

In 1506 Henry VII granted the "Great Charter" to Chester (see: Charters). This made the City of Chester (apart from Chester Castle) a county separate from the rest of Cheshire. The Mayor and Sheriffs were invested with authority to hold a Court in the Common Hall of the City for the trial of offences and claims of all kinds (except for treason) arising within the City, its suburbs, and hamlets, and Port-mote and Crown-mote courts were to be held before the Mayor. The forfeited goods of felons were to be the property of the citizens, who were also freed from the payment of all customs except those on wine and iron. The management and regulation of the Dee fisheries was vested in the Mayor and Sheriffs, as well as the control of the city markets. The twenty-four Aldermen were automatically justices of the peace by virtue of their office. As might be expected, putting the legal process into the hands of a largely self-electing body representing the mercantile community was a recipie for the development of vested interest.

Exploring Tudor Chester


Explore Queen Elizabeth Tudor's Chester as it was in 1581 (without the plague, fear of robbery or having a building fall on you) "mouse-over" on the map below will reveal various locations. Clicking on a location will reveal more detail.

Related Pages

 * Stanley Palace;
 * Dutton;
 * Cowper;
 * Charters;
 * Chester Mystery Plays;
 * Shakespeare and Chester;