[1] It was founded by a group of gentlemen (including the lawyer James Crossley and the clergymen Thomas Corser, Richard Parkinson, and Francis Robert Raines), who wished to promote interest in the counties' historical sources.
[5] Many distinguished historians and scholars have been involved in the life of the society, including John Eglington Bailey, C. R. Cheney, John Parsons Earwaker, Edward Hawkins, Sir Henry Hoyle Howorth, George Ormerod, Sir Frederick Maurice Powicke, William Stubbs, Thomas Frederick Tout, J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, and Joseph Brooks Yates, amongst many others.
[7] Since 1843, the society has published nearly 280 volumes in three series, supplying a regular output of valuable works of scholarship relating to the study of the history of North-West England.
Publications included Pott's Discovery of Witches, Civil War Tracts, and various diaries, journals, autobiographies, correspondence, heralds' visitations, family deeds, papers, letters, and accounts, school registers and records, wills, and ecclesiastical and parish histories.
Publications covered a diversity of areas and topics, including charters, cartularies, rolls, rentals, surveys, autobiographical writings, biographies, genealogies, and various parish, town, and local histories.