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2 The culture of the Cheshire gentleman T he Adlington display discussed in the previous chapter was one example of a nationwide phenomenon during the 1570s and 1580s. Gentry decorated their manor houses and local churches with arrays of coat armour, sometimes depicting families across the county or region, but just as commonly limiting their coverage to the local hundred or district, or those with whom they had kinship connections. As we have seen, there were displays of this sort throughout Cheshire. They can be documented at Brereton Hall, at Utkinton, at
8 Cheshire and the outbreak of civil war THE IRISH REBELLION AND BILLETING T he outbreak of the Irish rebellion in October 1641 transformed the political atmosphere in Cheshire. Chester was the great entrepôt for Ireland, the point at which fleeing refugees and news of the rebellion arrived in England and from which troops were dispatched to suppress the rebellion. Because of this the city and the county became preoccupied with the Catholic threat and the fallout from the billeting of soldiers. In the process the political initiative in the shire, which for
4 Cheshire politics in the 1620s and 1630s RESPONSES TO CROWN DEMANDS T he levies exacted under the royal prerogative were the main flashpoints in early Stuart government. In many ways they can be taken to define the relations between the centre and the localities, perhaps even the Caroline regime and the political nation, during the late 1620s and 1630s. In county after county the forced loan, distraint of knighthood, ship money and the exactions associated with the lieutenancy led to opposition and obstructionism on the part of local taxpayers. But this was