Courts

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In the late Middle Ages office the office of Justice of Chester was a powerful position, but it was also a decidedly deadly one: few survived the office without being exiled, killed or simply dying in office. Peaceful retirement was seldom an option.

Palatine Jurisdiction
In England, a county palatine or palatinate was an area ruled by a hereditary nobleman enjoying special authority and autonomy from the rest of a kingdom or empire. The name derives from the Latin adjective palātīnus, "relating to the palace", from the noun palātium, "palace". The precise location of the "Palace of the Earl" in Chester is unknown, although some early maps show its supposed ruins in Edgar's Field.

Palatinate thus implies the exercise of a quasi-royal prerogative within a county, that is to say a jurisdiction ruled by an earl, the English equivalent of a count. A duchy palatine is similar but is ruled over by a duke, a nobleman of higher precedence than an earl or count. The nobleman swore allegiance to the king yet had the power to rule the county largely independently of the king. It is therefore distinguished from a feudal barony, held from the king, which possessed no such independent authority. Rulers of counties palatine created their own feudal baronies, to be held directly from them in capite, such as the Barony of Halton. Formal county palatine jurisdictions were first created in England under the rule of the Norman dynasty. In continental Europe, they have an earlier date, although the Anglo-Saxon subdivisions of England, even after there was an overall English King may have in practice had much local jurisdiction.

Besides its own City courts, Chester was the location of courts held at Chester Castle for the county at large. In the Middle Ages the county court, presided over by the justice of Chester, was the superior court for the whole county palatine, including the city. The other palatinate court, the Chester exchequer, operated under the authority of the chamberlain of Chester and heard cases concerned, among other matters, with debt. From 1543 the chief justice of Chester held criminal sessions on circuit for Cheshire, Flintshire, Denbighshire, and Montgomeryshire, the equivalent of the assizes held for other circuits and known as the Court of Great Sessions. The sessions for Cheshire were held twice a year at the castle, usually in March or April, and September or October, and as elsewhere were accompanied by much ceremonial and became the focus of the county gentry's social season. The Court of Great Sessions and the Chester exchequer were abolished in 1830, but Chester remained an assize town until both the assizes and quarter sessions were replaced nationally by Crown Courts in 1971.

Until the palatinate was taken back under control of the Crown the Norman Earls of Chester were the heads of their own legal and fiscal system for any matter other than treason. This meant that Chester and Flintshire (eventually together with the "March" counties of Denbighshire and Montgomeryshire) had a legal system which was independent of the national assizes. The fact that the City became a county in itself as a consequence of Charters made matters even more complex.

The Justice of Chester
The Justice of Chester was the chief judicial authority for the county palatine of Chester from the establishment of the county. Within the County Palatine (which encompassed Cheshire, the City of Chester, and Flintshire), the Justice enjoyed the jurisdiction possessed in England by the Court of Common Pleas and the King's Bench. As the list below shows, the position was often a precarious one and at times few survived the office without being exiled, killed or simply dying (often quite young) - notable Justices of Chester between 1387 and 1471 included:




 * DIED IN EXILE: Robert de Vere, Duke of Ireland 1387–1388: a "favourite" and court companion of King Richard II - he was attainted and sentenced to death in absentia by the "Merciless Parliament" of 1388;


 * MURDERED: Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester 1388–1391: the leader of the Lords Appellant, a group of powerful nobles whose ambition to wrest power from Richard II, culminated in a successful rebellion in 1388 that significantly weakened the king's power. Richard II managed to dispose of the Lords Appellant in 1397, and Thomas was imprisoned in Calais to await trial for treason - during that time he was murdered;


 * EXECUTED: John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter 1391–1394: a half-brother of Richard II, to whom he remained strongly loyal. He is primarily remembered for being suspected of assisting in the downfall of King Richard's uncle Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester. Early in 1400 Holland entered into a conspiracy, known as the Epiphany Rising, with his nephew Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent, and with Thomas le Despencer and others. Their aim was to assassinate King Henry and his sons, and to return Richard, then in prison, to the throne. The plot failed and Holland fled, but was caught, near Pleshy Castle in Essex, and executed on 16 January 1400.


 * DIED IN EXILE: Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk 1394–1398: as a result of his involvement in the power struggles which led up to the fall of Richard II, he was banished and died in exile in Venice.


 * EXECUTED: William le Scrope, 1st Earl of Wiltshire 1398–1399: Scrope was captured with Bussy and Green when Bristol Castle surrendered to Henry on 28 July 1399. He was executed without trial at Bristol Castle, together with Bussy and Green, and his head carried to London in a white basket to be displayed on London Bridge.


 * KILLED IN BATTLE: Henry Percy 1400–1403: in 1403 the Percys turned against Henry IV in favour of Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, and then conspired with Owain Glyndŵr against King Henry. In 1408 Percy invaded England in rebellion once more and was killed at the Battle of Bramham Moor. Percy's severed head was subsequently put on display at London Bridge.


 * DIED IN OFFICE: Gilbert Talbot, 5th Baron Talbot 1403–1419. He died in office aged 35.


 * DIED IN OFFICE: Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter 1420–1426: an English military commander during the Hundred Years' War, and briefly Chancellor of England. He died in office, in 1426 (aged 50).


 * DIED IN CUSTODY: Humphrey of Lancaster, Duke of Gloucester 1427–1440: the trial in 1441 of Eleanor Cobham, his second wife, under charges of witchcraft, destroyed Gloucester's political influence. In 1447, he himself was accused, probably falsely, of treason, and died a few days later while under arrest.


 * BEHEADED BY MOB: William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk 1440–1450: the disastrous renewal of the war in France, and other national problems spelt the destruction of Suffolk's career. Many accused him of maladministration and poor conduct of the war, and political pressures forced Suffolk into exile in 1450. Arriving at the coast on his way out of the country, he was caught by an angry mob, subjected to a mock trial, and beheaded.


 * DIED IN OFFICE: Thomas Stanley, 1st Baron Stanley 1443–1459 (joint): died on 11 February 1459 of natural causes.


 * KILLED IN BATTLE: John Talbot, 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury 1459–1460: he was killed at the Battle of Northampton.


 * Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby 1461–?: change of regime never really weakened his grip on the key offices of Chester and Lancaster and throughout his life Stanley consolidated the legacy he had inherited from his father and extended his hegemony and that of his family across the north-west. He was “a man of considerable acumen, and probably the most successful power-broker of his age”. He died in 1504, aged 69.


 * KILLED IN BATTLE: Richard, Duke of Gloucester 1471–?: was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1483 until his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat at Bosworth Field, the last decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses, marked the end of the Middle Ages in England.

The legal reorganisation of Wales and the Marches under Henry VIII diminished the authority of the Earl of Chester (i.e., the Prince of Wales) in the County Palatine: however the authority of the Justice was increased. In 1542, the Great Sessions were established in Wales, that country being divided into four circuits of three shires each. Denbighshire, Flintshire, and Montgomeryshire were made part of the Chester circuit, over which the Justice presided.

Under Elizabeth I, a second justice was added to each of the Welsh circuits, after which the senior and junior justice are generally referred to as the Chief Justice of Chester and the Second or Puisne Justice of Chester. Because the Cheshire justices were free to practise as barristers in the English courts or sit in Parliament, the post of Chief Justice was often awarded as a form of patronage by the Government to aspiring lawyers.

The offices of Chief and Puisne Justice were abolished in 1830, as part of reforms that also brought Wales under the jurisdiction of the courts at Westminster.

Portmote
The Portmote was the principal medieval court of the city, and is first mentioned in the early 13th century. The city sheriff (then a single officer) presided and judgement was vested in a group of doomsmen (judicatores), a body perhaps descended from the Anglo-Saxon lawmen and much the same in number. The doomsmen determined customs, fixed the dates when the portmote met, postponed cases if they deemed the evidence insufficient, and acted as witnesses to property transactions recorded in court. As a court of record, where the principal citizens witnessed one another's land grants, the portmote's main business was probably pleas of real estate, initiated by plaint and writ. The Portmote was held in the Common Hall, otherwise known as the Moot Hall (see: Commonhall Street).

Crownmote
The Crownmote, which apparently emerged as a distinct court in the later 14th century, was held in the Common Hall (see: Commonhall Street) under the presidency of the mayor and in the presence of the sheriffs who, as the executive officers, assembled the jurors. In 1399 the crownmote was declared the court in which defendants who failed to respond to the writ capias were to be outlawed. Its other business included coroners' inquests into violent deaths, indictments for trading offences and encroachments, and infringements of civic ordinances and of the Statute of Labourers, matters which in the later 15th century were heard instead by the mayor in 'full' portmote and once at a 'great inquiry' in the Common Hall.

Pentice
The sheriffs also operated in the Pentice court, where the procedure was more summary. The court, named from the structure in which it was held, a lean-to built against St Peter's church, was well established by 1288. Its earliest surviving records date from 1297.

Related Pages

 * Charters;