Note 6 — SECTION I. OF THE ISLAND OF LOTHINGLAND.

The strength of the contest during the whole of this dispute may be summed up in these words: “By this controversy between the burgh of Great Yarmouth and the men of Little Yarmouth and Gorleston, in Lothingland it appears that prescription, seeing they were no burghs, prevailed not to assert and make good a liberty of unlading goods and exposing them to sale in the towns.” By the same it is also evident that liberties belonging to free burghs are only to be had and obtained by the king’s charter; and that where they were used without it, they were esteemed and judged usurpations, especially if practised and continued to the prejudice and damage of a free burgh. It was observed before, that the fee of this hundred was originally in the crown, and it appears to have continued so, without any interruption, till the time of king Henry 3rd, who, in the twenty-second year of his reign, anno 1238, granted it to John de Baliol and Devergill, his wife, one of the sisters (Ives says nieces) and heiress of John Scot, Earl of Chester and Huntingdon, in exchange for their part of the county of Chester. The reasons which induced king Henry to make this exchange were strictly political: the ancient Earls of Chester being Earls Palatine, bore great sway in any combination of the barons, and this the king, as well as his father, had often experienced. Randulf, the sixth Earl of Chester, uncle and immediate predecessor of John, was not only a man of great power, but of considerable abilities and much integrity; he warmly espoused the cause of king John against the barons, and proved himself a faithful champion to his son, even to the preservation of his person, and the raising him to his father’s throne; his attachment to loyalty seemed to proceed from conviction; and, notwithstanding his being so great an advocate for John and Henry, yet, with all the dignity and hardiness of one of the iron barons of that period, he openly rebuked the former in parliament for his criminality respecting the wives and daughters of the nobility, and joined with the Earl of Cornwall to force the latter to seal the new charter of the forest liberties instead of that which he had cancelled at Oxford. Earl John, the last of this family, his successor, adopted his uncle’s system, and took part with king Henry upon the great difference between him and Richard, Earl Marshall, in 1233, and, upon the solemity of Henry’s marriage with Eleanor, daughter of Raymund, Earl of Provence, we find him bearing the sword, called Curtana before the king, in token, says Matthew Paris, that, being an Earl Palatine, he had power to restrain the king, if he should be exorbitant. It is no wonder, therefore, that, upon his death, Henry should be desirous of annexing the county of Chester to his crown, especially as he left no issue, and only female relations; and as this earldom was, in some respects, entitled to royal privileges, and a local monarchy, he assumed it into his own hands, “lest so fair a dominion should be divided among women;” and in the 31st year of his reign this Earldom annexed to the crown for ever, and remained so till the 21st of Richard 2nd, when by Act of Parliament, it was united to the principality of Wales.