which is said to have been at one time considerable, appears latterly
to have been small; but it is to be regretted that it was abolished and
not retained, as in the adjoining County Palatine of Lancaster, as in
these days it would have been of great use.
[Illustration: The last seal which was in use when the Chester
Palatinate Court was dissolved.]
The Chief-Justiceship of Chester, being the most lucrative as well as
the most important of the Welsh Judgeships, was looked upon as one of
the great prizes of the profession, and was held by many distinguished
men. When the Great Session came to an end the salary of the Chief
Justice was £1630, and that of the second Justice £1250. An annual
pension of £1015, 12s. was granted to Thomas Jervis (father of Sir
John Jervis, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas), who was second
Justice of Chester, by way of compensation for loss of his office. The
Chief-Justiceship of Cheshire was vacant at the time. In Ormerod’s
_History of Chester_, in the _History of the Great Sessions of Wales_,
by Mr. W. R. Williams, and in the contribution to the _History of
the Courts of Great Session of Wales and of the Chester Circuit_,
by the late Chancellor Trevor Parkins, from which I have obtained a
considerable amount of information, is given a list of judges and
officers of these Courts from early days to their abolition in 1830.
A very important person on every Circuit was the Attorney-General,
who was appointed by the Crown, and possessed all the powers of the
King’s Attorney-General. The principal officer on each Circuit was the
Prothonotary, who attended on the Justices when they held their Courts,
and discharged similar duties to those now performed by the Associate.
He was appointed by the Crown, and was usually Clerk of the Crown also.
The subordinate officers were a marshal, a registrar, and a crier, and
these were appointed by the Chief Justice.
The Chamberlain of Chester or his Deputy was the Keeper of the original
Seal of Chester and Flint. At Chester, where a considerable amount of
business was transacted, there was a much larger bar than there was
on the Welsh Circuits. The Northern Circuit was strongly represented
there. John Williams, James Parke (afterwards Lord Wensleydale),
Joseph Littledale, William Wightman, and Charles Crompton, all of
whom became High Court Judges, were among the members of the Northern
Circuit who practised at the Chester Assizes in the early years of the
last century. David Francis Jones, for some time Recorder of Chester,
better known as Sergeant Atcherley, and those eminent lawyers, John
Horatio Lloyd and William Newland Welsby, Recorder of Chester, and
long the leader of the present Chester and North Wales Circuit, were
also members of the Chester Palatine Bar. Lord Kenyon and Chief Baron
Richards, both of whom were afterwards Chief Justices of Chester, were
among those who belonged to the Welsh Circuit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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