Cheshire

“ For this reason Cheshire was called a County Palatine, that is, a county whose ruler exercises all the powers of an independent prince, save only that he owns allegiance to his overlord the king. And the sword, the 'sword of dignity', as it was called, was no light one. You may see it if ever you visit the British Museum, a mighty two-edged weapon four feet long, with its inscription in Latin engraved beneath the hilt, 'Hugo comes Cestriae,' Hugh Count of Chester. ”

“ The woods were in the fulness of their summer verdure, displaying a thousand varied tints of green and yellow; to the right we could see the great plain of Cheshire stretching away towards the Frodsham hills and the estuary of the Dee, the green meadow-breadths looking almost golden in the sunset sheen. A warm aërial haze suffused itself over the landscape, softening into beauty every object ”

“ Every one knows the result of the fatal fight fought within sight of Chester walls, when most of the knights and squires, the flower of Cheshire chivalry, lay dead on the stricken field. Woeful was the day for Cheshire men. Henry captured the Baron of Kinderton and Sir Richard Vernon, and beheaded them. Even some who fought on the King’s side fell in battle, including Sir John Calveley and Sir John Massey. Moreover, the stern Henry was wroth against the county, and every man felt that his head was in jeopardy. ”

“ BRIGHT and fair is the Cheshire land and well renowned in story. It is one of the most famous counties in England, and can raise its head proudly above other less noted shires. It rejoices in being a County Palatine, its Earls in former days having sovereign jurisdiction within its precincts. The Earls of Chester held their own Parliaments, summoned the barons and tenants to the conclave, and Acts of Parliament passed by English houses of representatives had no force within the Palatinate of Cheshire. ”

“ I have heard a countryman express this peculiarity in these words: “The common people live in the lanes, but the quality (that is, the well-to-do farmers) live up in the fields.”
With regard to Cheshire families in the dim past, Camden the antiquary of the sixteenth century wrote: [49] “Cheshire is the great nursing-mother of the gentry; for there is no other English county that formerly supplied the King’s army with more nobility, or that could number more knightly families.” ”

“ Not only in the past have the rocks and rivers of Cheshire helped to make history, but even to-day they have a very direct bearing upon the fortunes of Cheshire men and women. How many of us reflect, as our eyes travel over the plain to the distant hills, that on the wise and orderly arrangement of mountain and valley, forest and winding stream, our very existence and means of livelihood depend? Truly Nature has other work to do than merely create picturesque landscapes. ”

“ We might mention the names of several of the illustrious families of the shire whose scions still continue to follow in the footsteps of their forefathers, and have conferred credit on their houses and on their native county. Some of the great and good men of Cheshire have but recently passed away, whose names are household words in the Cestrian land. They need no mention, no memorial, save that which their lives and good deeds have afforded. The love of the men of Cheshire for their shire has inspired many an act of daring, much toil, much devotion ”

“ But in the following year the King was pleased to pardon the county, and extracted a fine of 300 marks from the city.
The valour of Cheshire men has shone forth on many [p. 13] a battlefield. Look at that gallant feat of arms at the battle of Poictiers, when Lord Audley and his four Cheshire knights, Sir John Delves, Sir Thomas Dutton, Sir Robert Foulshurst, and Sir John Hawkstone won for themselves undying fame. Sir Piers Legh of Macclesfield, from whom are descended the Leighs of Lyme, had the lordship of that place granted to him for taking the Count of Tankerville prisoner. ”

“ Cheshire, which plumes itself on being "the seedplot of nobility," and of possessing a greater number of old county families than any other English shire, boasts no worthier or more ancient stock than the Leghs; their history is closely interwoven with the history of the palatinate, and they claim a high antiquity, tracing their descent in this country back to the time of the Conquest, when an ancestor came over in the retinue of Duke William, the Norman invader. ”

“ The men of Cheshire were noted for their skill in archery. They looked upon the earls of their palatinate as their titular sovereigns, and fighting under their banner gained much renown in the wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and nowhere did they display greater bravery or win more renown for England than on the morning of that memorable Monday in September, 1356—ten years after the fight at Crescy—when the Black Prince, with his small force of 8,000, found himself surprised by the King of France, with an army of 60,000 men. ”

“ William captured the city and received the submission of Edric the Forester and other Saxon leaders. Chester was put in charge of a Flemish noble called Gherbod, who, however, in the following year returned to his native land. Then, leaving a trail of fire and sword through 59 mid-Cheshire, William marched southwards to Salisbury Plain, where he held a grand review of all his followers and distributed to them their rewards. You will not see him again in Cheshire. No part of the country ever needed a second visit from the 'Conqueror'. ”

“ The fashion, wealth, and beauty of Cheshire and South Lancashire had their representatives amongst that struggling, swooning, writhing, shrieking, groaning mass of humanity, heaped and huddled in indiscriminate confusion, with up-torn seats, posts, and draperies. ”

“ Here in central Cheshire we ought not to have been intent on scenery, but on salt, for of this, as of silk, our smiling county has almost a monopoly. And only too soon the blue day was darkened by the smoke of Northwich, the principal seat of the salt trade and quite the dirtiest town in the county. The valley of the Weaver, the river that crosses Cheshire about midway between its northern boundary, the Mersey, and its southern, the Dee, has the richest salt-mines and brine-springs of England. ”

“ Few of them stayed at home for any length of time, and when they returned, they generally found that some score had to be settled with the Welshmen, who had been making havoc of their lands during their absence. So that whether at home or abroad, fighting was always their chief business.
Cheshire has been called the 'seed-plot of gentility'. The Cheshire gentry prided themselves on marrying within their own county. A Cheshire proverb says: ''Tis better to wed over the mixen than over the moor,' meaning the moorland that separates Cheshire from her neighbours. ”

“ Its geographical position has thus made it a meeting-place of nations, and you will see in later chapters that all the peoples that have helped to make our national history have in turn realized the importance of its position, and have fought desperately for its possession. Briton and Roman, Angle and Saxon and Dane, Welsh and Norman have all left some mark of their presence in the county, and from these many elements is derived the blood that flows in the veins of nearly all Cheshire boys and girls of to-day. ”

“ Even to this day the tree is thought to possess the power of bringing good or evil. A superstitious Cheshire labourer will not, if he can help it, cut down an ash tree for fear it should bring him misfortune, and churn staves made of ash are used by farmers' wives to prevent the butter from being bewitched.
It is in fact from the Angles and Saxons that we have inherited the priceless possession of our English tongue. The oldest traces of our language in a written form in Cheshire may be seen in the Grosvenor Museum at Chester. ”

“ CHESHIRE, although it borders on Wales, has caught but little of the Celtic imagination; and it is remarkable that the only Celtic legend current is found on the northern side of the county. The folk-lore of this County Palatine cannot compare with the quantity and quality of the Shropshire folk-lore; but legends are to a great extent born of valley and hill and stream, and Cheshire, with its vast plain, is, with the exception of the river Dee, deficient in those material phenomena which are present in such profusion in the neighbouring border county. ”

“ When the royalist garrison of Beeston Castle, the "other hill" of this pancake county, was at last forced to accept terms from the Roundhead troops, there was "neither meat nor drink found in the Castle, but only a piece of a turkey pie, two biscuits, and a live pea-cock and pea-hen."
Yet Cheshire is famed rather for the virtues of peace,—for thrift, civility, and neighbourly kindness. An early-seventeenth-century "Treatise on Cheshire" says: "The people of the country are of a nature very gentle and courteous, ready to help and further one another ”

“ Nine churches in England (six of them in the old kingdom of Mercia) are dedicated in her name. One of these is in Cheshire at Warburton, Werburgh town. That place gave its name to an honoured Cheshire family, which has given its scions to the service of their country in many directions, and which still holds a position of high renown and esteem in the county. We may thus legitimately term St. Werburgh a Cheshire Saint. We cannot do better than follow her [p. 271] favourite precept and common saying: “Please God and love Him, and doubt not anything.” ”

“ The “post and panel” work, the “magpie” style, to use the sobriquet sometimes familiarly applied to it, so plentifully strewn throughout its length and breadth, does certainly bring a very distinct contribution to the picturesqueness of the Palatinate, whose now fertile plain, studded with these timber structures, is where buildings of this traditional type most do congregate. Indeed, it is a question whether they do not serve to connote Cheshire quite as much as that prosaic product the cheese, which has [p. 81] made the name and fame of the county a household word! ”

“ Cheshire, in its most characteristic condition, is the Cheshire of the cheese-farms in the great fertile plain, where mild-eyed cows stand knee-deep in pastures; and a great manufacturing town is entirely out of sympathy with such idyllic scenes. I give you my word there are no idylls in Stockport: only a road where the granite setts are greasy ”

“ The city of Chester gives its title to the heir to the Crown, as the Prince of Wales is always Earl of Chester; and that fact in itself gives a dignity and importance to both city and county. Then, as will be pointed out in some of the papers which follow, as a County Palatine, Cheshire had privileges and rights of a peculiar character, and all this has made the task of selection of subjects to be treated of more difficult, and the reader will doubtless sympathise with the Editors, even though he may not altogether approve of the result of their labours, and may lament certain omissions. ”

“ Strong i’ th’ arm and weak i’ th’ yed.” It sounds like a taunt thrown across the border of my native county of Lancashire. Strong i’ th’ arm Cheshire men have ever been, as the story of many a fight and foray in which they have gallantly played their part has effectually told, but the long line of Cheshire worthies serves to prove that their heads are not weaker than those of their neighbours. ”

“ Cheshire (730) , a western county of England, between the Mersey and the Dee, the chief mineral products of which are coal and rock-salt, and the agricultural, butter and cheese; has numerous manufacturing towns, with every facility for inter-communication, and the finest pasture-land in England.
Cheshunt (9) , a large village in Hertfordshire, 14 m. N. of London, with rose gardens, and a college founded by the Countess of Huntingdon.
Chesil Beach, a neck of land on the Devonshire coast, 15 m. long, being a ridge of loose pebbles and shingle. ”

“ Soon the gallant Welsh princes raised an army, marched on Chester, defeated the Northumbrian King with great slaughter, and elected Cadwan King of Wales at Chester.
For more than a century Cheshire remained under British rule, but stronger grew the Saxon power, when the rival kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex had settled their quarrels; and in A.D. 828 King Egbert came to Cheshire, captured the city, and made the country parts of the Mercian kingdom. This Mercian kingdom embraced a large extent of country, and was not divided into shires until the beginning of the tenth century. ”

“ Not all the men of Cheshire were loyal to Richard, or were perhaps wearied of him. When the storm burst some of them, including Sir Richard and Sir John Legh, went over to Henry’s side. He came to Chester and raised an army there, and executed Sir Piers Legh, who had remained faithful to Richard. Soon the men of Chester saw the stern Duke of Lancaster marching into the city, and behind him rode their unfortunate King, a prisoner in the hands of one who knew no pity, and soon to be done to death at Pontefract Castle. ”

“ Loyalty to the crown was a strong characteristic of the Cheshire men, a feeling that was no doubt strengthened by the many marks of royal favour their county had received from its earls, in whom they recognised their titular sovereigns; hence the intimate relations which existed between the king and the palatinate. When the Duke of Gloucester assembled a body of men in order that he might retain control of the youthful sovereign, Richard hastened to Chester and called out his loyal Cheshire guard ”