Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/53

 1920 EARLDOM OF CHESTER 45 to the title of earl was founded. This was, as part of the terms arranged, carried out by a formal quitclaim to the king by de Forz and his wife of all her share in the inheritance of John late earl of Chester in the earldom of Chester tarn in terris et tenementis quam in libertatihus et liheris consuetudinihus ad esneciam pertinentibus. Three bishops, three earls, and many others formally attested this important and (it is believed) unprecedented document, which is dated 16 October 1241.^ This was followed by a final concord at Westminster on 3 February 1241/2 recording the admission of the king's right to the share cum castro, sigillo et libertate gladii. The king's acquisition of the comitatus and extinguishment of the dignity was now complete. It has often been considered that this acquisition of the county palatine was an arbitrary act on the part of the Crown. ' Henry III by a violent but wise resumption wrested the earldom from (John's) co-heirs and united it to the Crown', writes the historian of Cheshire,^ and others both before and after him have expressed similar views of the transaction. But the evidence is against this ascription of violence. Whatever was the motive of the king the recorded processes of the exchanges were constitutional and legal. Bargains, apparently fair, and in some instances revised favourably for the co-heirs, were struck with each of them in turn, whereby the king was ultimately enabled to obtain full ownership without any recorded violence, and after struggles only in the legal sense ; the whole transaction in the light of the evidence presents the Crown and its advisers in a favourable light. References to the transaction in thirteenth-century Cheshire documents ascribe no hardship. It was simply an 'exchange'.^ Doubtless the king had determined upon the acquisition and extinction of the earldom, for reasons partly pecuniary, partly based upon its geographical position as a bul- wark against the invasions of the Welsh. He knew well the need of a strong earl of Chester, if earl there must be. This he could not reckon upon, and the alternative was to control the region himself, so that he might make use of it as a base for his operations in North Wales. A distrust of the future of this great earldom in the hands of a weak representative of female co-heirs, with all its traditional independence and power for good or ill, seems to find expression in the reason ascribed for the annexation in the chronicles of later times. Higden and Knighton (whom Dugdale follows) say of Earl John's inheritance : Verum quia ' Charter Roll, 16 October 1241, printed pos^ p. 54. The final concord is printed in Lane, and Chesh. Records, Pt. i, p. 80. comitatus Cestrie devenit in manum Regis.
 * Ormerod's Cheshire (1882), i, p. Iv.
 * See the Cheshire cases in Abbrev. Plac. Charters often refer to events postquam