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This article reassesses the nature of Richard II’s relationship with the principality of Chester (1397–1399) through the lens of royal justice. It attempts to look beyond the concept of factional maintenance to assess the royal administration’s support of serious lawbreakers within and without Richard II’s Cheshire retinue, bringing to light hitherto unseen sources. It sets these complaints against Cheshire in the context of petitions to the king since the beginning of the reign which had complained of the county’s inhabitants’ violent incursions into neighbouring English counties. The article also revisits a case study highlighted in this journal by Gwilym Dodd in 2002, the murder of William Laken — a Lancastrian retainer of Henry of Bolingbroke — by Sir John Haukeston of Cheshire in September 1397. The reassessment reveals violent and murderous crimes which had been carried out with greater impunity than has previously been assumed, and by men who could rely on a prince de Cestre to manipulate royal justice by abusing the regalian right to pardon indicted criminals. It is ultimately argued that the phrase ‘Lancastrian propaganda’ takes too much away from our understanding of contemporary criticism toward Ricardian Cheshire.
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