Magna Carta of Chester

Several clauses approach issues found in the Runnymede charter, but in a different way. Clauses 1 and 4 deal with the rival claims of the earl's court and barons' courts to jurisdiction over tenants living on baronial estates. Clause 1 acknowledges the earl's right to judge the most serious offences, but Clause 4 allows defendants of his court to plea 'thwetnic' (total denial), on which the defendant would be released to the jurisdiction of their baron.[12]

Clauses 2 and 3 refer to the system whereby fugitive villeins from outside the county, including those fleeing justice, could take refuge on the estates of the earl or his barons. This was accompanied by an obligation on the part of male fugitives to provide labour and military service.[12]

Clause 5 limits penalties that the earl's court could apply, but Graeme White argues that this applied only to the specific of non-attendance by judges and suitors; a far more restricted context than that specified in Magna Carta clauses 20 and 21.[12] Clause Six grants various rights within the Cheshire forests: to assart, cultivate land and sell dead wood. Clause 8 protects widows and heirs, but makes no specific mention of wardship.[12]

Clause 9 raises the issue whereby urban residence for a year and day would secure an individual freedom from villeinage. Migration from the countryside into Chester - prospering as a port in the wake of Henry II's acquisitions in Ireland - was of concern to the Cheshire barons, who wanted their entitlements to reclaim their villeins spelled out.[12]

Clause 10 concerns limits to military service and castle-guard duty, similar to Magna Carta clauses 16 and 29. However, Clause 10 goes into a level of detail befitting a frontier county accustomed to threatened or actual attack from the Welsh. Significant points here include the treatment of the Lyme as a border beyond which Cheshire knights are not obliged to fight and the expectation that the garrisoning of Chester castle should fall primarily upon fees of the honour outside the county.[12]

Clause 11 limits the provisions that could be claimed by officials. This clause resembles Magna Carta Clause 28, although the Cheshire charter focusses specifically upon the entitlements of itinerant law-enforcement officers.[12]

Clause 12 of the charter has no counterpart in Magna Carta. Ranulf III was quite happy to itemise the petitions he had turned down, most of which were related to the aspirations of particular individuals or interest-groups, rather than the baronial community as a whole.

Clause 12 [12]

And may it be known that the aforesaid barons have completely remitted to me and my heirs, on behalf of themselves and their heirs, the following petitions which they were asking from me, so that they can claim nothing in relation to them henceforth, unless by my grace and mercy: namely, the steward his petition for wreck and fish washed up on his land by the sea, and for shooting in my forest with three bows, and for hunting with his dogs; and others the petition for the agistment of pigs in my forest and for shooting with three bows in my forest, or for the coursing of their hares in the forest on the way to, or returning from Chester in response to a summons; and the petition for the amercement of the judges of Wich thirty boilings of salt, but the amercement and laws in Wich shall be as they were before.

Original Latin text

Clause 12
Et sciendum est quod predicti barones peticiones subscriptas, quas a me requirebant, omnino mihi et heredibus meis de se et heredibus suis remiserunt, ita quod nihil in eis de cetero clamare poterunt, nisi per gratiam et misericordiam meam; scilicet, senescallus peticionem de wrec et de pisce in terram suam per mare deiecto, et de bersare in foresta mea ad tres arcus, et de percursu canum suorum; et alii peticionem de agistiamento porcorum in foresta mea et de bersare ad tres arcus in foresta mea, vel ad cursus leporariorum suorum in foresta in eundo versus Cestriam per summonitionem vel in redeundo; et petitionem de misericordia iudicum de Wich triginta bullonum salis, set erunt misericordia et leges in Wich tales quales prius fuerunt.

The steward mentioned was Roger de Montalt, who held land on the south-west side of the Dee estuary; he was well-placed to profit from accidents to ships using the port of Chester. The reference to, 'the coursing of their hares in the forest on the way to, or returning from Chester in response to a summons,' suggests that the barons were hoping that sport would be laid on whenever they were summoned to Chester.[12]

• Barraclough, Geoffrey, ed. (1988). "394. The Magna Carta of Cheshire, or the Charter of Liberties granted at the petition of the barons of Cheshire, the same liberties to be conceded by the barons to their own knights and free tenants.". The Charters of the Anglo-Normal Earls of Chester, c. 1071-1237. Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. pp. 388-393.
• Carpenter, David (2004). The Struggle for Mastery: The Penguin History of Britain 1066–1284. London: Penguin.
• Hewitt, Herbert James (1929). Mediaeval Cheshire: An Economic and Social History of Cheshire in the Reigns of the Three Edwards. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Holt, J. C. (1992). Magna Carta (2 ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lush, Jane (15 January 2015). "Cheshire's Own Magna Carta". Tarvin Online. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
• Swallow, Rachel (2014). "Gateways to Power: The Castles of Ranulf III of Chester and Llywelyn the Great of Gwynedd". Archaeological Journal. 171 (1): 289–311. doi:10.1080/00665983.2014.11078268. S2CID 162382565.
• Turner, Hilary L. (1971). Town Defences in England and Wales. London: Archon Books.
• White, Graeme (May 2015). "The Magna Carta of Cheshire". The Magna Carta Project. Translated by Pepler, Jonathan. Retrieved 17 February 2017.