The officers of justice

Cheshire’s judicial system lay outside usual English legal jurisdiction. Those who ran that system were therefore extremely important to the life of the county and in changes to government policy towards the palatinate. The involvement of courtiers or others linked to the central administration was often the subject of controversy in Cheshire and elsewhere. This chapter will consider whether in the early Tudor period local administrative posts were taken by outsiders or by local men with strong interests at court resulting in a diminution in the county’s autonomy. It will argue that the officers of the shire remained largely local men; that if they began to represent the influence of any outside body, it was that of the Council in the Marches of Wales as much as the court; and that their influence was neither dramatically new nor disruptive of the privileges and community of the palatinate. In fact, the presence of men with outside interests served to reinforce commitment to the palatinate’s traditions and to the rights of elites both in the centre and locality.

The justice and his deputy

The justice of the county palatine was the crucial figure in the judicial adminstration of Cheshire. Although he rarely attended in person, he was responsible for the appointment of the deputy justice. The Stanleys dominated the justiceship during the later fifteenth century. The post was held first by Thomas, second Lord Stanley, and then from 1485 by him as earl of Derby with his son George, Lord Strange. After Thomas’s death in 1504, however, the new justice was Sir Thomas Englefield, an appointment prefigured in 1491 when Englefield became deputy justice. Englefield had no personal link with the palatinate. The only son of John Englefield of Englefield (Berkshire), Thomas was a bencher at the Middle Temple by 1500 and a councillor to Henry VII. His national prominence was seen in his speakership of the parliaments of 1497 and 1510, and service as an executor of Henry VII’s will.. His involvement in the marches is clear from the 1490s; he was a member of the Council in the Marches and to the justiciarship of Chester he added the posts of justice of assize in north Wales in 1506 and in south Wales in 1508.