Chester's Great Charter 1506
What is the Great Charter?
Chester's Great Charter confirms that Chester is a County in its own right, to be considered quite separate from the County of Cheshire. The Charter lays out the procedures for the election of the City's Mayors, Sheriffs, Aldermen, Recorder, Coroners and Murengers (overseers of the Walls). It establishes the Mayors duties as Escheator, Clerk of the Market and Admiral of the Dee, establishes the new County Court as well as the existence of the Pentice, Portmote and Crownmote Courts. The Charter also allows the carrying of the Civic Sword to be carried point upright in the presence of all except for immediate Royal family.
The Great Charter - Background
Chester's Great Charter of 1506 was given to the City by King Henry VII in the 21st year of his reign. Henry became King in 1485 after the Battle of Bosworth Field and his victory over King Richard III's Yorkist Army. Indeed, the Charter begins by alluding to the great services rendered to him by Chester's citizens on the battlefield.
Henry's claim to the throne was through his descent from John of Gaunt's illicit affair with Catherine Swynford. As a Lancastrian, his marriage to Elizabeth of York was designed to strengthen the monarchy and eliminate further issues of succession by combining the Lancastrian and Yorkist factions within the Tudor line.
The Great Charter
The value of the Great Charter lies in the way that it formally recognises Chester's existing customs and practices as well as re-confirming what had been written in earlier charters. Importantly, the procedures laid out in 1506 were to form the basis of government in Chester for the next 300 years, until the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835.
The Great Charter is not the earliest of Chester's Charters nor is it the most decorative. There survives an undated Charter from Henry II, thought to date from circa 1176, and another from King John dated 1201. Although Chester was by no means the first English City to be made a County of itself by a Royal Charter, it was certainly the first City in the north west to have that honour.
The Charter itself, in the care of the Cheshire Archives, is faded and almost illegible in parts, from being pored over in the distant past. There is a blank space at the top left hand side of the charter where space had been left for an illuminated capital letter to be added, which never was.
The 1506 Charter was not the first time that Henry had showed interest in the City of Chester. He was petitioned early in his reign, in 1486, to alleviate the Crown Rent (fee farm) that the City paid to the Crown. This was duly reduced from £30 to £20 per year in recognition of the fact that Chester remained a very important city despite the poverty caused by the silting up of the River and the decline of the Port.
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