During the ministries of Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, the palatinate of Chester underwent unprecedented change. This chapter examines how Wolsey’s lust for power and determination to achieve glory for his master led him to intervene in Cheshire with lasting, if not necessarily intentional, results; and how more urgent pressures, the need for religious uniformity, fears of civil war and treason, and the urgency of raising revenue, compelled Cromwell to attempt greater systematisation and to integrate the palatinate more fully into the king’s dominions. Behind these practical imperatives, at least in Cromwell’s mind, there operated an ideology of ‘imperial’ government which sought the unification of authority. Alongside the plans of ministers worked the brokerage of courtiers who acted as a link between the county and the king and his ministers. Sir Ralph Egerton andWilliam Brereton have been seen as ‘over-mighty courtiers’ whose rise and fall increased central control over Cheshire, and even brought palatine autonomy to an end. The argument here will be that the influence of Wolsey and Cromwell, Egerton and Brereton, was not so dominating or so catastrophic for the palatinate community as might have been expected.

The impact of Thomas Wolsey

While Henry VII concentrated on making the palatinate work for him, and not undermining it, Wolsey subjected the major Cheshire gentry to unprecedented concerted persecution in courts directly under his control as chancellor and brought the administration of the county further into line with that of the rest of England. In so doing he opened the county to the influence of his agents, both royal servants and his own.

The end of Henry VII’s reign saw the disappearance from Cheshire politics of William Smyth, one of the men most closely identified with the king’s tough financial policies. Sir Randal Brereton continued as chamberlain of Chester, yet the general atmosphere of recrimination over the policies of Henry VII’s last years opened him to at least one complaint, from Piers Dutton, and his stewardship of the county’s finances was noticeably lax, with arrears as high as £1,359 6s. in 1514.