After the death of the seventh Earl, in 1237, Henry the Third united the Earldom to the Crown; he afterwards conferred it upon his eldest son, Prince Edward, about A.D. 1245, who, two years after this, received the homage of his military tenants at Chester. From that period to the present the title of Earl of Chester has been vested in the eldest son of the reigning sovereign, and is now held by His Royal Highness Albert, Prince of Wales. In 1255 Llewellyn ap Gryffid, Prince of Wales, provoked by the cruel injuries his subjects had received from Geffrey Langley, Lieutenant of the County under Prince Edward, carried fire and sword to the gates of Chester. In 1257 Henry the Third summoned his nobility and bishops to attend, with their vassals, at Chester, in order to invade Wales; and in 1275 Edward the First appointed the city as the place for Llewellyn to do him homage, whose refusal ended with the ruin of himself and his principality; for in 1300 Edward of Carnarvon here received the final acknowledgment of the Welsh to the sovereignty of England; and in a few years afterwards, Llewellyn was brought hither a prisoner from Flint Castle. Richard the Second visited this his favourite city in 1397, and in 1399 he was brought a prisoner from Flint Castle to the castle of Chester, which Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry the Fourth, had seized. In Owen Glendower’s wars this city was a _place d’armes_ for the English troops in the expeditions against the Welsh, who, ever tenacious of their independence, were as unwilling to submit to the Norman as the Saxon yoke. In 1459 Henry the Sixth, with Queen Margaret and her son Edward, visited Chester, and bestowed little silver swans on the Cheshire gentlemen who espoused her cause. It appears that Henry the Seventh and his Queen also visited Chester in 1493. In 1554 George Marsh, the pious martyr was publicly burnt at Boughton, for his steadfast adherence to the Protestant faith. In the year 1617 the city was honoured with the presence of James the First, when Edward Button, the then Mayor, presented the King with a gilt cup containing one hundred jacobuses of gold. From this time no event of any great importance appears to have transpired, until the city was involved in the calamities of a siege, in consequence of its loyalty to Charles the First. The city stood the siege for some months; but the inhabitants at last, reduced to the extremity of famine, so that they were compelled to eat horses, dogs, cats, and other animals, abandoned their resistance, made honourable terms of capitulation, and yielded the city on February the 3rd, 1645–6.