Georgian Chester

(work in progress)

The Georgian era is a period in British history from 1714 to c. 1830–37, named after the Hanoverian Kings George I, George II, George III and George IV. The sub-period that is the Regency era is defined by the regency of George IV as Prince of Wales during the illness of his father George III. The definition of the Georgian era is often extended to include the relatively short reign of William IV, which ended with his death in 1837. Historians debate the exact ending, with the deaths of George IV in 1830 or William IV in 1837 as the usual marker. In most social and cultural trends, the timing varied. The emergence of Romanticism and literature began as early as the 1780s, but religious changes took much longer and were incomplete until around a century later. The 1830s saw important developments such as the emergence of the Oxford Movement in religion and the demise of classical architecture. Victorians typically were disapproving of the times of the previous era. By the late 19th century, the "Georgian era" was a byword for a degenerate culture.

By 1700 Chester was on the verge of losing its dominance as a regional economic hub, as nearby towns, especially the industrial and mill towns in south Lancashire and around Telford began to specialize in trade or manufacturing. The reopening of the Dee in 1737 did not halt Chester's decline as a port. In 1701 Chester shipowners had 25 vessels, and in the early 1710s the total tonnage, no more than 3,400, was less than half that owned at Liverpool. By the 1730s it had fallen to around 1,650 tons (a tenth of Liverpool's total) and in the late 1750s Chester's 1,000-1,400 tons was scarcely a twentieth of Liverpool's fleet. Efforts were made to improve the Dee by dredging a "new cut" in the estuary and cutting the canal, but the decline of traditional industry and trade continued. The passenger trade to Ireland remained important.

The guild system in Chester continued well into the 18th Century, with the Tanners being particularly active in maintaining their monopoly. In the 1710s, in concert with tanners' guilds in London and elsewhere, it campaigned against new taxes on leather and sought to restrict the export of oak bark to Irish competitors. However the inward Irish linen trade grew as did the outward export of cheese, particularly to London. The corporation had become somewhat corrupt: in 1698 it formally abolished annual elections, restored 17 ex-councilmen, co-opted 23 others, and confirmed the existing 22 aldermen in office for life. A major theme in the history of Georgian Chester is the rise to prominence of the Grosvenors who started the period as baronets and ended it as marquesses. In effect, the Grosvenors took over the role of the Earls of Chester, even though that title was generally held by the Prince of Wales.

By 1700, the central "shopping" area was becoming defined with the beginnings of the later separation of high-class retailers and more workaday shops in distinct areas of the city. The "better-class" shops were now beginning to cluster in Eastgate Street. The Georgian period saw most of the "medieval" frontages re-done in brick. Many of these survive today, even if some of these have been re-covered with "mock Tudor", either in an elegant manner or simply by "nailing on planks and boards". The cultural life of Chester in the century after the Restoration reflected its growing importance as a social centre for the gentry of the surrounding area and as a place where many leisured families resided. The walls were increasingly used for recreation by visitors and residents alike after the city had them repaired and flagged from 1707. Chester's principal attractions for outsiders were the races and the fairs, especially the Midsummer fair, where entertainments were put on by the 1710s.

==[http://chester.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Timeline#George_I_.281_August_1714_.E2.80.93_11_June_1727.29._Anne.27s_closest_living_Protestant_relative_.2851st_in_succession.29._Was_never_Earl_of_Chester. George I]==

Whig (Liberal) politicians believed Parliament had the right to determine the succession, and to bestow it on the nearest Protestant relative of the Queen, while many Tories (Conservatives) were more inclined to believe in the hereditary right of the Catholic Stuarts, who were nearer relations. Partly due to contrary winds, which kept him in The Hague awaiting passage, George did not arrive in Britain until 18 September 1714. George was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 20 October. His coronation was accompanied by the 1715 rioting in over twenty towns in England. George then dismissed the Tory cabinet and replaced it with one almost entirely composed of Whigs, as they were responsible for securing his succession. The election of 1715 saw the Whigs win an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons, and afterwards virtually all Tories in central or local government were purged, leading to a period of Whig ascendancy lasting almost fifty years during which Tories were almost entirely excluded from office. Such had been the turmoil of the times that the first thing done by the new Whig administration was the passage of the Riot Act. The preamble makes reference to:


 * "many rebellious riots and tumults [that] have been [taking place of late] in diverse parts of this kingdom",

adding that those involved "presum[e] so to do, for that the punishments provided by the laws now in being are not adequate to such heinous offences".

The Jacobites
The Jacobite rising of 1715 was the attempt by James Edward Stuart (the Old Pretender) to regain the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland for the exiled Stuarts. The rising should be seen in the context of the rioting which had taken place in association with the accession of George I and the replacement of the Tory administration by the Whigs. As onetime heir to the throne James was Prince of Wales from July 1688 until, just months after his birth, his Catholic father was deposed and exiled in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This also had made him earl of Chester. On 14 March 1715, James appealed to Pope Clement XI for help with a Jacobite rising:


 * "It is not so much a devoted son, oppressed by the injustices of his enemies, as a persecuted Church threatened with destruction, which appeals for the protection and help of its worthy pontiff"

Despite receiving no commission from James to start the rising, the Earl of Mar sailed from London to Scotland, and on 27 August at Braemar in Aberdeenshire held the first council of war. On 6 September at Braemar, Mar raised the standard of "James the 8th and 3rd", acclaimed by 600 supporters. By October, Mar's force, numbering nearly 20,000, had taken control of all Scotland above the Firth of Forth, apart from Stirling Castle. The Jacobites moved south into England with little opposition, and by the time they reached Preston, Lancashire had grown to about 4,000 in number. General Charles Wills was ordered to halt their advance, and left Manchester on 11 November with six regiments, arriving at Preston on 12 November and starting a series of street fights known as the battle of Preston. On 13 November, additional government forces arrived from Newcastle under George Carpenter, which Wills deployed to ensure the besieged Jacobites could not escape. Seeing that their position was hopeless, the Jacobites surrendered.

Despite its Tory inclinations and some sympathy for the Jacobites, Chester made no move in support of the rising of 1715. The defeat of the rebels at Preston spared it direct involvement in military operations, although its Militia was called up and government troops marched through. Captured Jacobites numbering up to 500 at a time were brought for temporary imprisonment at Chester, crowding Chester Castle and the city gaol and overflowing into houses throughout the city. Initially many perished of cold, hunger, and fever because local sympathizers were prevented from assisting them:


 * "The weather was very severe, and the snow lay a yard deep in the roads. Many of the above mentioned prisoners died in the castle by the severity of the season; many were carried off by a very malignant fever; and most of the survivors were transported to the plantations in America. As the castle was quite filled with these prisoners, the Lent assizes were held at Nantwich" (Hemingway)

Two regiments were kept at Chester for almost a year, and there was some friction between civil and military authorities. The recorder, Roger Comberbach, who had shown ostentatious enthusiasm for the Hanoverians, fell foul of the colonel commanding at the castle in 1715 in a dispute over jurisdiction, and was briefly placed under house arrest in humiliating circumstances before the colonel was himself removed.

The Grosvenors
The Grosvenors of Eaton, near Chester, were a Cheshire family of great antiquity and substantial fortune, derived mainly from Welsh lead mines. Sir Thomas Grosvenor, 3rd Baronet had build a substantial house at Eaton and had become involved in local politics. In 1676 the then 21-year old Thomas married Mary Davies, the 12-year old heiress to London estates covering a large part of modern Mayfair, Belgravia, and Pimlico, which increased the Grosvenor income from about £4,500 to £22,000 p.a. in 1742. Thomas died in 1700 leaving three minor sons, Richard, Thomas and Robert, and a daughter Anne, who all grew up under the care of Francis Cholmondeley, M.P., uncle of Charles Cholmondeley of Vale Royal, their mother having been declared mentally deranged.

In 1715 one of the sons, Richard Grosvenor, was returned as MP for Chester and in the same year he was elected as mayor of the city. The Grosvenor interest, having reasserted itself, held at least one of the Chester seats continuously until 1874. Richard Grosvenor appears to have had Jacobite sympathies. In September 1715 he attended a meeting of the Jacobite Cheshire Club, when it decided not to take part in the rebellion of that year. His name was included in a list of Jacobite leaders sent to the Pretender in 1721, and in 1730 he was in correspondence with the Stuart court at Rome through the Duchess of Buckingham. The supposed "prophecies" of Robert Nixon may have emerged at this time. Ther are other links between Cheshire and the Jacobites: Francis Cholmondeley had refused to take the oaths to William and Mary and was encouraged in his Stuart sympathies by his relation Sir Philip Egerton.

From the 1710s the Grosvenors repeatedly intervened in the city's affairs. Attempts to break their power were always thwarted, despite popular support and the presence within the corporation of a faction opposed to Grosvenor influence. Their growing interest in monopolizing parliamentary elections led the Grosvenors to try packing the body of freemen with supporters. Normally the Assembly admitted many new freemen before an election. Some were members of the county gentry and their dependants, many of whom resigned the freedom as soon as the election was over. Most, however, were inhabitants of Chester and its environs, entitled to the freedom by descent or apprenticeship but unwilling or unable to take it up until the Grosvenors paid the fees. The total numbers admitted in election years could be very large, as for example 338 by birth and 162 by apprenticeship in 1720, and c. 450 and c. 175 in 1732. As well as vote rigging there were many other dubious examples of patronage: clerk of the Pentice Roger Comberbach (d. 1720 - he of the "Recorder's Steps"), was followed by his son-in-law Thomas Mather, but when Mather died in 1745 William Falconer was chosen on the recommendation of Sir Robert Grosvenor. Comberbach arranged in 1712 for the clerkship of the Pentice to be granted for life to his son, also Roger, then aged 19, jointly with Thomas Lloyd. Lloyd had a deputy by 1735 and died in 1754, after which in 1757 the younger Comberbach took out a new life-grant jointly with Thomas Brock, this time recommended by Sir Richard Grosvenor.

In 1725, Daniel Defoe (author of Robinson Crusoe) visited Chester and wrote:


 * "The walls, as I have said, are in very good repair, and it is a very pleasant walk around the city and within the battlements".

By 1725 the city had three separate masonic lodges, more than in any other provincial town, who met at the Sun, Spread Eagle, and Castle and The Falcon inns. Membership had shifted decisively towards country gentlemen, members of the urban élite, and army officers from the garrison. The master of the Sun lodge, Colonel Francis Columbine, was the first Provincial Grand Master in the country. While masonics flourished, catholicism did not:


 * "A private soldier received 900 lashes and was drummed out of his regiment with rope about his neck having been found guilty of being a Papist."

==[http://chester.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Timeline#George_II_.2811_June_1727_.E2.80.93_25_October_1760.29._Son_of_George_I._First_Earl_of_Chester_since_the_.22Old_Pretender.22. George II] (11 June 1727 – 25 October 1760)==

George II suppressed his father's will because it attempted to split the Hanoverian succession between George II's future grandsons rather than vest all the domains (both British and Hanoverian) in a single person. Both British and Hanoverian ministers considered the will unlawful, as George I did not have the legal power to determine the succession personally. Critics supposed that George II hid the will to avoid paying out his father's legacies. George II had been made Prince of Wales when his father arrived in Britain to become George I (1714) but appears to have never been Earl of Chester.

Political chicanery continued in Chester. In 1732 the Whigs tried to win over the mayor of 1731-2 (Trafford Massie) by offering clerical preferment for his son. Shortly before the election in 1732 the Whig candidate for mayor left £100 in gold with Massie in return for a written promise to call no further Assemblies. Meanwhile sporadic disorders culminated in a clash in Bridge Street in early October between a Whig mob (allegedly reinforced with disguised soldiers, revenue officers, and Liverpool sailors) and Tory supporters who included Welsh miners. The latter came off worse, and the Whigs broke into and wrecked the Pentice. The mayor called for dragoons from Warrington to help restore order and appointed c. 270 special constables. The violence shocked the faction leaders into a truce, but when polling was adjourned the Whigs, supposing that their man had won, pursued the mayor and justices into the coffee house under the Exchange and carried off the mayoral sword and mace.

The New Cut


Chester as a port was still declining. Plans to improve the navigation of the River Dee dated back to the 1670's. In 1700 an Act of Parliament (11 & 12 Wil. III. C. 24, R. A. 11th Apr) "An Act to enable the Mayor and Citizens of Chester to recover and preserve the Navigation of the River Dee", was passed as regards the construction of a channel in the Dee. The preamble of this stated:


 * "That the river was theretofore navigable for ships and vessels of a considerable burthen from the sea up to the City of Chester, but that but by neglect of the said river, and for want of sufficient protection against the flux and reflux of the sea, the navigation to the city was almost lost and destroyed."

Pamphleteers from 1699 placed the blame for the silting of the Dee on colliers returning from Dublin, who discharged their ballast in the "Wild Road" (a channel of the river) and this then became trapped in the numerous nets placed by fishermen. Prior to this ships coming from Ireland need not be in ballast due to the import of cattle. The stoppage of the cattle trade occurred in 1680, when the Cattle Act, forbidding the import of Irish live cattle, sheep, pigs, beef, pork or bacon was made permanent, following the petitions of graziers in England who had vociferously argued for the trade to be stopped. The Act of 1700 empowered the Mayor, Aldermen and Common Councillors of Chester to appoint seven Commissioners, of whom the Mayor and two Justices of the Peace should be three, to trace the course of the new channel which was to be cut by Gell. If there were disputes over compensation, the Corporation should choose three arbitrators and the persons complaining three. Appeal lay to the Chief Justice of Chester. The tolls were limited to 1d a barrel of coal and 2d a barrel of lime brought to the city by land or water and there unloaded. The duty on coal brought by land was explained on the ground:


 * “there’s nothing can come by water which will bear the charge.”

George Sorocold, who could be considered Britain's first "civil engineer", was paid £20 to propose improvements to the river in 1706, but, possibly due in part to frenzied investing elsewhere and then the "credit crunch" of that time, following the collapse of the "South Sea Bubble", nothing was then done until 1732 when a further survey was carried out by John Mackay. In the meantime the improvements to the River Weaver meant that rock salt (which had been discovered near Northwich in 1670) led to increasing trade following the Weaver, down the Mersey and thence to Liverpool. The craft which plied this trade returned back up the Weaver Navigation with coal from the south Lancashire coalfields, and this coal was used for boiling more brine to produce more salt.

In 1733 the Merchant Venturers of Chester obtained an Act of Parliament authorising a 'New Cut' under the supervision of the marine engineer Nathaniel Kindersley. "The first sod of the new channel of the river Dee was taken up by R Manley Esq April 20th".

Newspapers
Initially there was little increase in cultural interests or literary habits, though enough business for stationers and perhaps bookbinding and basic printing. In the earlier 18th century there were usually at least two booksellers, handling the scholarly libraries of deceased local clergy and gentlemen. From the early 1710s one or two worked their own presses, producing mostly sermons and other religious and educational works. One also began to print books in Welsh. William Cooke started a local newspaper in 1721, rivalled from 1732 and then driven out of business by another, later the Chester Courant, founded by Roger Adams and continued by his widow Elizabeth and her successors into the late 18th century.

More Jacobites
George II's French opponents encouraged a further rebellion by the Jacobites. In July 1745, the Old Pretender's son, Charles Edward Stuart, popularly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender, landed in Scotland, where support for his cause was highest. George, who was summering in Hanover, returned to London at the end of August. The Jacobites defeated British forces in September at the Battle of Prestonpans, and then moved south into England. The Jacobites failed to gain further support, and the French reneged on a promise of help. Losing morale, the Jacobites retreated back into Scotland. Charles faced George's military-minded son Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, in the Battle of Culloden, the last pitched battle fought on British soil. The ravaged Jacobite troops were routed by the government army. Charles escaped to France, but many of his supporters were caught and executed. Jacobitism was all but crushed; no further serious attempt was made at restoring the House of Stuart.

George III
George's life and reign, which were longer than those of any of his predecessors, were marked by a series of military conflicts involving his kingdoms, much of the rest of Europe, and places farther afield in Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Early in his reign, Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War, becoming the dominant European power in North America and India. However, many of Britain's American colonies were soon lost in the American War of Independence. Further wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France from 1793 concluded in the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Georgian Architecture
John Vanbrugh grew up in Chester, where his family had been driven by either the major outbreak of the plague in London in 1665, or the Great Fire of 1666. It is possible that he attended The King's School in Chester, though no records of his being a scholar there survive.

Georgian architecture is characterized by its proportion and balance; simple mathematical ratios were used to determine the height of a window in relation to its width or the shape of a room as a double cube. Regularity, as with ashlar (uniformly cut) stonework, was strongly approved, imbuing symmetry and adherence to classical rules: any lack of symmetry, where Georgian additions were added to earlier structures remaining visible, was deeply felt as a flaw

Related Pages

 * Industrial Revolution;
 * Canal and Boatyard;

Chester in Other Historical Periods



 * Before The Romans;
 * Roman Chester;
 * Dark Ages;
 * Medieval Chester;
 * Tudor Chester;
 * Stuart Chester and Civil War;
 * Georgian Chester;
 * Victorian Chester;