POLITICAL HISTORY 



right of correcting any defaults of justice on the part of the duke's court or 

 officers. It was further stipulated — practically as a corollary of the first 

 reservation — that the duke should continue to send to all Parliaments and 

 Councils two knights to represent the shire, and two burgesses from each 

 borough, and should appoint proper persons to collect the taxes granted by 

 those bodies.'™ 



The title of earl of Lancaster having for the present been merged in 

 the higher dignity of duke of Lancaster the district from which the former 

 was derived was now commonly described not as the county but as the duchy 

 of Lancaster.'" Royal mandates, such as those for the election of members 

 of Parliament, and the collection of subsidies, which would hitherto have 

 been sent ' to the sheriff of the county of Lancaster,' were now addressed 

 ' to the Duke of Lancaster or his lieutenant (or chancellor) in the Duchy.'"* 

 The divisions of the county are spoken of as ' the six wapentakes of the 

 Duchy.'"' 



The old name, however, was too firmly rooted to be entirely ousted, 

 especially as palatine jurisdiction in accordance with the Cheshire precedent 

 was granted to Henry as earl of a county though administered by him under 

 the higher title of duke ; "* occasionally Lancashire is described simultaneously 

 as a duchy and a county."^ 



The county and the duchy of Lancaster being identical areas, the sphere 

 of the chancellor and other officers of the duchy was in Duke Henry's time, 

 and afterwards under John of Gaunt, limited to Lancashire. In his other 

 lands the duke retained the older titles of earl of Leicester, Derby, &c., 

 and no change took place in their administration. It was not until a duke 

 of Lancaster ascended the throne in the person of Henry IV that the term 

 ' duchy of Lancaster ' was extended to include the , whole complex of his 

 private estates. The reasons which dictated this change of nomenclature 

 will be considered in their proper place."' 



On Duke Henry's death of the plague on 13 March, 1361, his dukedom 

 became extinct, and his palatine rights lapsed in accordance with the terms 

 of the grant made ten years before. Lancashire ceased to be a duchy, and 

 was once more governed as an ordinary county — subject only to the modifica- 

 tions entailed by the original grant to Earl Edmund. Edmund's rights, 

 including the hereditary sheriffdom, descended to the king's fourth son John 

 of Gaunt, earl of Richmond,"'^ who had married Duke Henry's elder daughter 

 Blanche and now succeeded Jure uxoris to a moiety of her father's vast estates, 



'™ W. J. Hardy, Chart, oj Duchy of Lane. lo. The charter does not say that the duke shall ' choose ' the 

 representatives as asserted by Mr. Armitage-Smith (John of Gaunt, 208), who otherwise gives the best account 

 of the Lancaster regalities. 



"' Cf. the provision on the creation of the duchy of Cornwall in 1337 that ' the county of Cornwall 

 should remain for ever as a duchy to the eldest sons of the kings of England ' ; Rot. Pari, iv, 140. 



'" Ibid, iii, 400, 404. Under Duke John the sheriff sometimes reported to the duke that in his 

 'full duchy' (i.e. county court) he had caused knights of the shire to be elected ; Chan. Misc. bdle. i, file 3. 



"' Misc. R. Chan. -|§. 



'" In the next century we occasionally hear of ' the duchy palatine,' but this was rare. 



'" Thomas de Thelwall was chancellor (of John of Gaunt in 1377) 'within the Duchy and County 

 of Lancaster ' ; Dep. Keeper's Rep. xxxii, App. i ; cf Armitage-Smith, op. cit. 219. "° See below, p. 211. 



"' His father had also given him (in 1360) the castle and honour of Hertford ; Dep. Keeper's Rep. xxxi, 

 App. 32. In 1372 he surrendered the earldom and honour of Richmond, at Edward's desire, and received 

 instead the castle of Pevensey, the castles and honours of Tickhill and Knaresborough, the castle and manor 

 of High Peak, and other manors, &c., from Nottingham to Sussex; Hardy, Chart, of Duchy of Lane. 26 ; 

 Armitage-Smith, op. cit. 203. 



207 



