Cheshire as a Palatinate

As Cheshire proceeds with plans for devolution as part of a Mayoral Combined Authority, this talk examines the county’s history of semi-independence from central government. Beeston castle (pictured),visible across Cheshire, was an assertion of the self-governing authority of the medieval earls of Chester, in relation to both England and Wales. The county’s relative autonomy continued after the earldom passed to the crown under Henry III but was curtailed in the sixteenth century and extinguished in 1830, only now to be revived in a modern context.