HKB
policy, but what are found in the law of nature, and their express contracts in their charters, and their implied contracts in the commissions to governors and terms of settlement.
The cases of Chester and Durham, counties palantine within the realm, shall conclude this fatiguing ramble. Chester was an earldom and a county; and in the 21st year of king Richard 2d. A. D. 1397, it was, by an act of parliament, erected into a principality, and several castles and towns, were annexed to it, saving to the king the rights of his crown. This was a county palatine, and had jura regalia, before this erection of it into a principality. But the statute which made it a principality, was again repealed by 1. Henry 4th. c. 3, and in 1399, by the 1. Henry 4th. c. 18. Grievous complaints were made to the king, in parliament, of murders, man-slaughters, robberies, batteries, riots, &c. done by people of the county of Chester, in divers counties of England. For remedy of which it is enacted, that if any person of the county of Chester commit any murder or felony in any place out of that county, process shall be made against him by the common law, till the exigent in the county where such murder or felony was done: and if he flee into the county of Chester, and be outlawed, and put in exigent for such murder or felony, the same outlawry or exigent, shall be certified to the officers and ministers of the same county of Chester, and the felon shall be taken, his lands and goods within that county shall be seized as forfeit into the hands of the prince, or of him that shall be lord of the same county of Chester, and the king shall have the year and day and waste; and the other lands and goods of such felons, out of said county, shall remain wholly to the king, &c. as forfeit. And a similar provision in case of battery or trespass, &c.
Considering the great seal of England, and the process of the king's contracts did not run into Chester, it was natural that malefactors should take refuge there, and escape punishment, and therefore a statute like this was of indispensible necessity, and afterwards, in 1535, another statute was made, 27. Henry c. 5th. for the making of justices of peace, within Chester, &c. It recites, "the king, considering the manifold robberies, murders, thefts, trespasses, riots, routs, embraceries, maintenances, oppressions, ruptures of his peace, &c. which have been daily done within his county palatine of Chester, &c. by reason that common justice hath not been indifferently ministered there, like and in form as it is in other places of this his realm, by reason whereof the said criminals have remained unpunished; for redress whereof, and to the intent that one order of law should be had, the king is empowered to constitute justices of peace, quorum, and goal delivery, in Chester, &c."
By the 32. Henry 8th. c. 43, another act was made concerning the county palatine of Chester, for shire days.