Chester had in fact rapidly become the chief seat of trade in the north-west of England, and when the Conqueror ordered the sees of the bishoprics to be removed from thinly populated centres to the large towns, Peter, the first Norman bishop of Lichfield, left Lichfield 'a sordid and desert place' and came to Chester, 'a city of renown,' making the church of S. John his cathedral. Chester did not, however, keep this honour long, for Peter's successor removed to the rich monastery of Coventry. Hence it is that you find three mitres on the arms of the bishopric of Chester.
Earl Hugh Lupus died in the second year of the reign of Henry the First. Three days before his death he had put on the cowl and robe of a Benedictine monk and entered his own monastery at Chester. He was buried in the abbey cemetery, and his only son Richard, a boy of seven years of age, inherited the earldom.
The Abbey of Combermere was founded for another brotherhood of monks called Cistercians. Their 'rule' was even more strict than that of the Benedictines. They wore neither boots nor cowl, and for a portion of the year were allowed but one meal a day; nor were they permitted even to speak to one another. In 1178, John, Baron of Halton, to secure the safety of body and soul previous to making a pilgrimage to Palestine, built a Cistercian abbey at Stanlaw, a dreary spot on the shore of the Mersey estuary, and a third house of the same Order was founded at Pulton on the Dee by Robert Pincerna, butler to Earl Randle II. Stanlaw was almost wholly destroyed by a huge tidal wave which swept up the Mersey, and the monks were removed to Whalley on the banks of the Lancashire Calder. The monks, doubtless, were not sorry for the change, for by the end of the twelfth century the majority of them had grown tired of the simple life, and, becoming more luxurious in their way of living, preferred to build their homes in delectable river valleys, where they could fish the streams to their hearts' content.
Pulton Abbey was not more fortunate, and was much too near to the Welsh to be a comfortable place to live in. The Welsh visits were so frequent and unpleasant that the monastery was abandoned and the monks placed in a fine new abbey at Dieulacresse in Staffordshire.
The monks who kept the abbey records were not always very particular about the truth of the events they relate. They were very superstitious, and ready to believe any story that would increase the fame of their founders, or of their patron saints, to whom they ascribed the power of performing miracles. The story is told that when Earl Richard was making a pilgrimage to the holy well of S. Winifred in Flintshire he was attacked by a band of Welsh insurgents and compelled to take refuge in a neighbouring monastery. He prayed for aid to S. Werburgh, who is said to have instantly parted the waters of the Dee by making new sandbanks, over which the Constable of Chester marched troops to the relief of his lord. These banks were long after known as the Constable's sands.
CHAPTER XII
THE EARLS OF THE COUNTY PALATINE
In the western porch beneath the tower of Prestbury Church are a number of fragments of broken grave-slabs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. On nearly all is carved a cross, the head of which is usually enclosed within a circle, the ends of the limbs of the cross consisting of a triple lily, the favourite emblem of the Norman sculptors. One only of these fragments tells us over whose remains the slab was placed. An inscription, in which the letters VIVYN D are clearly seen, tells us that this fragment formed part of the tombstone of Vivian Davenport, Chief Forester of the Forest of Macclesfield. Hunting was the favourite sport of the Normans, and in Cheshire, as elsewhere, large tracts of forest land were enclosed for the protection of deer and game, and the amusement of the Norman knights. The Conqueror himself set the example by making the New Forest in the south of England, and shortly afterwards the Earl of Cheshire enclosed the Forests of Mara or Delamere in the west and Macclesfield in the eastern part of the county.
The forest laws were very strict. William the Conqueror did not indeed punish offenders with death, but he ordained that 'whoso slew hart or hind man should blind him, that none should touch the harts or the wild-boars, and he made the hare go free. So mightily did he love the high deer as though he were their father. His rich men bewailed it and the poor murmured at it, but he was so stark he recked not of them all.' The forest laws of Rufus were far more severe, and caused fierce hatred among his poorer subjects. The forests became the haunt of robbers and outlaws, who clothed themselves in suits of 'Lincoln green', the better to escape being seen in the greenwood. Foresters were appointed, whose duty it was to hunt out these lawless and rebellious men, as well as to preserve the game of the forest.
Grave-slabs at Prestbury