Catalogue description Records of the County Court and Courts of Great Sessions for Chester and Flint

The County Court, known later as the Court of Great Sessions, had competence over all civil and criminal actions in Cheshire and Flintshire. Through the issue of writs of error, it could also review the decisions of the minor palatine courts. In the later Middle Ages it sat eight or nine times a year. In theory it was held in the presence of the justice (rather than the sheriff as elsewhere in the kingdom), but in practice a deputy or a group of justices commissioned 'for this turn' normally presided. The chief officer of the court was the Prothonotary, who was also the Clerk of the Crown and who officiated for Flintshire as well as Cheshire.

Doomsmen and suitors representing individual wills assisted the justice or his deputy to give judgement and a grand jury was impanelled at each session to consider bills of indictment. Criminal actions were initiated either by a grand jury indictment, or by indictments made before the justice in his eyre or the sheriff in his tourn, or at the Macclesfield court or forest courts.

Civil actions were initiated by writs issued at Chester in the name of the king or earl, and in general resembled those heard in the Westminster courts. However, the County Court had no law terms and its unfinished business was deferred 'until the next session'. The limit of legal memory was fixed at 1232 for actions of novel disseisin and 1215 for mort d'ancestor.

The 1530s and 1540s brought considerable changes in the administration of law in the palatinate. From 1536 onwards justices of the peace were allowed to operate in Cheshire and commissions of the peace were issued from c1539. In 1540 the number of annual sessions of the County Court was reduced to two. As a result the sheriff's court for hearing minor offences was abolished, and in 1540 a new court was constituted to replace it. The number of coroners in the county was also restricted to two. In 1543 the justice was made responsible for holding sessions twice a year in Denbighshire and Montgomeryshire as well as in Cheshire and Flintshire, and a new seal was created to cover all four counties.

There was a hiatus in the operations of the Court of Great Sessions from 1643 until 1647, broken only by one session in February 1644. The working of the palatine seal was suspended, the king's writ ran in the palatinate, and the people of Cheshire had to sue and be answerable at Westminster. However, the Great Sessions resumed in 1648.

In the period after 1660 the court was often described as the 'assizes' and its crown side functioned much like assize courts elsewhere. In civil actions its jurisdiction over Cheshire causes was comparable with that of the Westminster courts. It also had competence over some aspects of county administration, such as the repair of highways and buildings.

Its work was considerable and in 1680 George Jeffreys, the chief justice, was the subject of bitter complaints for holding only one session instead of two. In the eighteenth century the sessions were major social as well as legal events. After the abolition of the court in 1830 its civil jurisdiction passed to the Westminster courts and for criminal actions Chester and Flint were incorporated in an assize circuit with North Wales.

From the time of the English conquest of Flintshire, that county was subordinated to the Earldom of Chester, and in the period 1284-1543 the Sheriff of Flint accounted to the Exchequer of Chester. Nevertheless, the two counties retained their separate identities, and the Justice of Chester held sessions in both areas.

In 1543 the two recently formed counties of Denbighshire and Montgomeryshire were added to the jurisdiction of the Justice of Chester. He was to hold Courts of Great Sessions there twice yearly, and a new prothonotary was to operate in these two counties and in Flintshire. In practice, however, the Prothonotary of Chester continued to serve in Flint, and while Denbighshire and Montgomeryshire remained separate from the palatine jurisdiction, Flintshire occupied an ambiguous position. The king appointed its sheriff, but its lesser functionaries were chosen by the officials of the Exchequer of Chester.

The Chamberlain of Chester exercised a local jurisdiction in Flint as well as Cheshire, and estreats and inquisitions were administered by the palatinate. In the sixteenth century some bills and answers in equity cases for Flintshire went to the Exchequer of Chester, but by the eighteenth century, the justices holding the Great Sessions in Flintshire had taken over that competence. As with Denbighshire and Montgomeryshire, the people of Flintshire also had final recourse to the court of Chancery in equity cases.