This volume deals with aspects of the very early history of Cheshire. Successive chapters on Physique, Prehistory, the Roman Period, Anglo-Saxon Cheshire, and the Cheshire Domesday (an introduction and a translation of the text) provide an outline of events up to the late 11th century. The deposition and evolution of the rocks and soils of the county provided the physical framework for human activity and the raw materials for man's exploitation. A notable instance is the beds of salt which have been worked at least from the Roman period and have caused subsidence in modern times; another is...

VOLUME III contains the history of eccle-siastical organization in Cheshire, both before and after the Reformation, medi-eval religious houses, Chester cathedral, education before 1903, and the more historically important endowed grammar schools in the county. In the Middle Ages the organization of the church in Cheshire was based on parishes which in the east of the county were exceptionally large, while those of the west resembled more closely the nor-mal English parish. Between 1075 and 1102 Chester was the seat of a bishop; for the rest of the Middle Ages the county lay in the diocese of...

This volume contains the administrative and parliamentary history of the county, a chapter on its forests, and a table of population. As a County Palatine in the later middle ages Cheshire developed institutions which differed from those of other English counties. No justices of the peace were appointed there until the 16th century, and the palatine courts were abolished only in 1830. The first part of the volume describes Cheshire's government in the middle ages and its gradual assimilation to normal' counties, the work of the justices of the peace from the 16th to the 19th century, and that...