An Edition of the Accounts of the Manor of Bickley, Cheshire, 1395-1465

The Bickley accounts were produced by the administrators of an estate of a medieval Cheshire magnate, originally members of the St Pierre family of Peckforton, and later the Cokesey family of Worcestershire. This book provides the full text and translation of the accounts and an extensive introduction, providing context for the way the accounts are constructed and associated administration. In spite of the increasing recognition of the distinctiveness and importance of Cheshire’s palatinate community in the wider political and military affairs of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the economic and social underpinnings of the political society of Cheshire are relatively little understood. Most of the surviving material of this kind is a product of the administration of the earls of Chester, and so the Bickley accounts offer a rare insight into other estate management in the shire.