There seems to have been a close attachment between this King and the people of Chester and of Wales, doubtless in consequence of the esteem in which they held his father, the Black Prince, whom they followed in his French wars, and who had placed confidence in them. King Richard had a bodyguard of 2000 Cheshire archers, many of whom accompanied him in his ill-fated expedition to Ireland, on his return from which he was taken prisoner by Bolingbroke at Flint Castle, and from there, it is said, brought to Chester Castle on his way to London. When the conquest of Wales had been finally completed by the defeat and death of Prince Llewelyn, Edward the First proceeded to regulate the administration of the territory he had acquired. By his ordinance called the “Statute of Rhudland,” he formed Flintshire into a county, attached, as previously mentioned, but subordinate to, that of Chester, and directed the Sheriff of Flintshire to render his accounts to the Exchequer there. The judges were appointed, sometimes for both counties, at others for each county separately. By the same statute the greater part of the district governed by Llewelyn was divided into the three counties of Anglesey, Carnarvon, and Merioneth, and it was to these counties that the name of “North Wales” was originally confined. Chester and North Wales were the oldest of the Welsh Judicial Circuits. Subsequently, on the petition of the Welsh themselves, in the reign of the Tudor King, Henry VIII., Wales was incorporated with England, and the Lordships Marches were divided into shires, the counties of Denbigh and Montgomery being added to North Wales. Wales then for the first time sent representatives to the English Parliament, but it was not until the reign of his son, King Edward VI., that the County Palatine of Chester was given parliamentary representation. Professor Freeman has said:-- “The Earldom of Hugh of Avranches stood alone in its greatness from the rest of the realm. How distinct Chester and Durham stood from the rest of the kingdom, is best shown by their having for so many ages (not until the reign of Edward VI.) no voice in the national Parliament. While Chester had its own courts and own baronage, knights and citizens from the all but independent state would have been as much out of place as knights and citizens from the Isle of Man or the Norman islands of the English Channel.”