The Third Series

This book provides an important study of the administration and finances of one of the most important lordships in the territories of the English crown – the earldom of Chester – based upon the surviving account rolls of the chamberlain and of the various manors held in direct ownership. The early fifteenth century is particularly significant, first because the usurpation of Henry IV led to the dismantling of Richard II's principality of Chester and to the creation of the future Henry V as earl as well as prince of Wales and duke of Cornwall, and secondly because the rebellions of Henry 'Hotspur' Percy and Owain Glyn Dŵr boosted the importance of the earldom within the Lancastrian polity.

An edition of the accounts of the manor of Bickley, Cheshire, 1395-1465, ed. Matt Bazley. ISBN 978-0-95542-769-5.

This book provides the full text and translation of the surviving accounts of Bickley (Cheshire), along with an extensive introduction. The accounts provide an insight into the economic and social underpinnings of the political society of Cheshire and are particularly valuable given that most of the other surviving material of this kind is a product of the administration of the earls of Chester, with the Bickley accounts offering a rare insight into other estate management in the shire.

‘A bread and cheese bookseller’: The recollections of James Weatherley of Manchester c. 1790-1850, by Michael Powell and Terry Wyke. ISBN 978-0-95542-768-8.

This book provides an edition of a previously unpublished manuscript autobiography of a bookseller who lived and worked in Manchester in the first half of the nineteenth century. It provides a vivid portrait of the hand-to-mouth existence of street sellers and small shopkeepers who in Manchester as elsewhere played a critical role in the book trade, contributing to the dissemination of cheap literature.

Seventeenth-Century Lancashire restored: The life and work of Dr Richard Kuerden, antiquary and topographer, 1623–1702, by William D. Shannon. ISBN 978-0-95542-767-1.

This book provides an account of the life and works of Richard Kuerden, a seventeenth-century Lancashire polymath who played an interesting, if perhaps marginal, role at the interface of the two cultures of seventeenth-century intellectual life, as a physician, antiquary, topographer, cartographer and perhaps even alchemist.

The Chester county court indictment roll 1354-1377: Dealing with serious crime in later fourteenth-century Cheshire, ed. Phyllis Hill and Paul Booth. ISBN 978-0-95542-766-4.

This book provides a translation and analysis of the Chester County Court Indictment Roll for the years 1354-1377.

The Hornby Castle estates: Agrarian change from the 1582 survey to the 1751 sederunt, by Jennifer S. Holt. ISBN 978-0-95542-765-7.

This book describes change on the Hornby Castle estates from about 1580 to the middle of the eighteenth century.

The diary of Edward Watkin, ed. David Hodgkins. ISBN 978-0-95542-764-0.

This book provides an edition of the diary of Edward Watkin in his twenties. It describes his public and private life in Manchester in the 1840s when he was busy campaigning for the Anti Corn Law League, arranging soirees for the Athenaeum to which Dickens and Disraeli were invited, and campaigning successfully for three public parks in Manchester.

James Crossley: A Manchester man of letters; including ‘In Memoriam: Douglas A. Farnie (1926–2008)’, by Stephen Collins. ISBN 978-0-95542-763-3.

This book offers a comprehensive account of the life and interests of James Crossley, one of the most important figures in the cultural, social, legal and political life of Manchester in the nineteenth century.

Thomas Eccleston (1752–1809): A progressive Lancastrian agriculturalist; including ‘In Memoriam: William Reginald Ward (1925–2010), by John M. Virgoe. ISBN 978-0-95542-762-6.

This book offers the first detailed assessment of the life and achievements of Thomas Eccleston of Scarisbrick, near Ormskirk.

The Parliamentarian and Royalist War Effort in Lancashire, 1642–51, by James M. Gratton. ISBN 978-0-95542-761-9.

This book offers a detailed account of the ways in which supporters of parliament and of the king waged way in Lancashire in the 1640s and 1650s.