Against All England: Regional Identity and Cheshire Writing, 1195-1656 (review)

Robert Barrett's monograph opens a new debate over Cheshire's regional identity in the Middle Ages, seen in opposition to London as England's political and cultural center. His approach is topographical and historicist, making use of the longue durée (1195-1656), set apart from previous center-based diachronic studies of what critics often see as "national discourse." Barrett attends to "the intranational tensions between Cheshire and the larger English community" (15) and focuses on "dialogic" Cestrian identity (17). The study is divided into two parts, with three chapters on Chester and two on Cheshire.

"Chester the City" includes an overview of Chester's identity in monastic writing and two types of civic performance at the beginning and end of the chosen period. In De laude Cestrie (c. 1195), the Benedictine monk of Saint Werburgh, Lucian, constructs an "allegorical topography" of the "cloistered city." Lucian's achievement is to celebrate "urban renewal," "shifting portions of the city's topography around in an attempt to consolidate the abbey's influence" (32). Literary devices such as the rhetorical triads ("groups of threes designed to convey the image of triple identities subsumed within a greater unity") are, according to Barrett, less likely to be influenced by Welsh tradition than an attempt to reflect the Holy Trinity. The number three also justifies Lucian's etymology for Chester's Latin name, the tri-syllabic word Cestria (derived from the phrase Dei castra, "camp of God"). Chester becomes the center of the world, a new Jerusalem imagined as a cross (if imperfect, as Bridge Street and Northgate do not form a continuous line), made up of two lines signifying the Old and New Testaments through the churches that mark them: the Old Testament line is marked by Eastgate (Saint John's church) and Watergate (Saint Peter's), as a reflection of the passage between the "precursor of the Lord and his gatekeeper," while the New Testament is marked by Northgate (Saint Werburgh's) and Bridge Street (Saint Michael's), as a link to the Virgin Mary and the Archangel (41). Henry Bradshaw's Life of St. Werburge (c. 1506-13) reflects this local monk's attempt to present Chester as "a site of organic and spiritual unity" (44). Bradshaw's text intervenes in the "long-running struggle between the mayor and the abbot for control of Chester" as his focus is on the "conflicting jurisdictions of Chester's local courts" (47). The initial victory went to the mayor, and the monastery's secular influence ceased with the Dissolution in 1539-40. Bradshaw's text was revived for the national scene through its publication in 1521 by Richard Pynson, the King's Printer, possibly due to its perceived utility for the "nationally coordinated anti-Lutheran" movement (53). Barrett considers that the Life was "primed for such appropriations" from the beginning, and its use was both local and national (58). While Lucian's and Bradshaw's texts are perfect markers of the beginning and end of Barrett's chosen period, it remains difficult to ascertain, at least for the nonspecialist reader, how dissimilar their texts were from monastic productions in other regions.

The following two chapters focus on the civic performances of the Whitsun plays and Chester's Triumph in Honor of Her Prince in 1610, which marked the first Chester horse races. In Play 5 of the Whitsun cycle (the Cappers' Moses and the law; Balaam and Balaack), the phrase "cittye, castle, and ryvere" (5.274) indicates the adaptation of the original story to local topographical details observed by actors standing on the performing wagon in Chester. Play 1, the Tanners' Fall of Lucifer, is used as a case study for Lucifer's rebellion, which "engages with local anxieties about political ambition" (81-82), while Lucifer risks "disenfranchisement" much as Chester's citizens did in the sixteenth century due to a multiplicity of jurisdictional boundaries. Play 13, The Blind...