There were said to be about 200 common soldiers still remaining in Lathom, but few of them took advantage of the opportunity to lay down their arms 'being old blades and mercenaries.' Some 15 guns and 400 smaller arms were captured, with some ammunition and stores of provision of several kinds. It was chiefly the deficiency of bread which had compelled the garrison to surrender. Lathom was finally given up to the Parliament at 3 p.m. on December 3rd, 1645, and the King had now no garrison left in Lancashire.
"This evening," says the "Perfect Diurnall" of December 6th, "after the House was up, they came letters to the Speaker of the Commons House of the surrender of Lathom House in Lancashire belonging to the Earl of Derby." All the newspapers for that week are full of references to the event.[175] At Castle Rushen, when at length the news reached the Isle of Man, there was great distress. Lord Derby's "Book of Private Devotions" contains A Meditation which I made when the Tidings were brought to me of the Delivering up Lathom House to the enemy, which consist of a long series of texts chiefly from the book of Job and from Jeremiah.
"Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me." (Job 29, v. 2.)
"But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock." (Job 30, v. 1.)
"Oh how sits the city solitary which was full of people? How is she become a widow? She that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary."[176] (Lam. 1, v. 1.)
It is impossible not to fully share his grief for the destruction of this magnificent fortress, "a little town in itself." "It was the glory of the county," wrote one who fought against the Earl in the civil war. This great House, whose Lords had enjoyed almost royal power for centuries was now a ruin. Splendid in loyalty, supreme among the nobility of the North of England, generous to their tenantry, the Lords of Lathom had a great record of honour and service. This was now at an end. The demolition of their House was complete. Everything moveable and saleable was stripped off and sold, the walls were cast down into the ditch; and it was never rebuilt.[177] And with old Lathom House departed much of the glory of the House of Stanley. Before the end of the civil war the Earl of Derby was beheaded at Bolton, and his descendants never recovered the state which had been his. In the following century the direct male line of his House died out, and the title passed to another branch.
This ended the fighting in Lancashire for the present; but the King's standard still floated over a few isolated towns and fortresses, and one of these was Chester, which had long been invested by Sir William Brereton, but still held out. The Cheshire Committee appealed to the neighbouring county for assistance in the autumn of 1645, but there was little help to spare from Lancashire then. In October, however, when there was a prospect of a royalist attempt to raise the siege of Chester, 200 horse and all the forces of Lonsdale Hundred were sent to Brereton's help. But he still appealed for more men (Oct. 27), and on November 7th more troops of horse were despatched under Major Clarkson and Major Robinson. Five hundred men had recently gone out of Lancashire to assist in the blockade of Skipton Castle, and the siege of Lathom House was still a heavy drain on the resources of the county. When Lathom fell, the troops there were set free for other service, but so wearied and insubordinate were they that they would not move without a fortnight's pay, and pay Brereton had none to give. Protests were of no use. At length Colonel George Booth was sent to Bolton to negotiate with the Lancashire Committee and succeeded in persuading their troops to march by promising them 'the same pay as other auxiliaries.' On December 11th the Lancashire Committee issued an order for all the available men to march, the horse under Colonel Nicholas Shuttleworth, Colonel John Booth and Colonel Assheton to command their own regiments of foot; and companies of foot not in either of these regiments might choose in which they would serve. The commanders at Chester, however, had still to endure some delay. Colonel Assheton had only just returned from London, and his regiment was very late in starting. Shuttleworth, with nine troops of horse, reached Tarporley about December 21st, and the others followed soon after.[178] The Lancashire horse were kept before Chester to strengthen the siege, and the foot, together with the Cheshire foot, were sent out to Whitchurch to intercept a possible royalist advance. When the royalists retreated all were brought back to the siege. Loud complaints were made by the Cheshire Committee of the insubordination of the Lancashire troops, but as they were paid more than any of the other auxiliaries they were probably more valuable. Brereton, however, continued to send appeals for help into Lancashire until nearly the middle of January, but on February 3rd, 1645‑6, Chester was finally surrendered. The Lancashire troops returned home and were mostly disbanded; there were now no soldiers in arms in the county excepting the garrison at Liverpool.[179]
There was now some years' quiet in Lancashire, and the stricken county was able to recover slowly from its devastation and misery. The general course of affairs was briefly as follows. After Sir Thomas Fairfax had beaten Goring at Langport in July and Rupert had surrendered Bristol in September, the royalist resistance was practically at an end though Raglan Castle held out until August, 1646. The King surrendered to the Scots at Southwell in May, 1646, and was sent to Newcastle; and there then began the long series of negotiations in which Charles showed all the duplicity and untrustworthiness and lack of judgment which was the worst side of his nature. First the joint offer of the Scots and Parliament was refused because the King would not abandon episcopacy; when the Scots went home in January, 1646‑7, he continued to play off the Independents against the Presbyterians. Circumstances favoured him to an extraordinary degree, but it was only a waste of time because he never really desired to come to any agreement, but continued to believe that he could regain his position by refusing all the terms which were offered. Then followed the open breach between Parliament and the army, the carrying off of the King from Holmby House, and the extremely moderate demands made by the Army in the Heads of the Proposals. These provided by far the best solution of the difficulty if only both sides could have accepted and kept them. In all this Lancashire had no part. The leaders were interested, particularly in Ecclesiastical affairs, but the people in general cared less about the negotiations than about the recovery of their own position. There can never be war, and especially civil war, without much misery; and though the Civil War in England was on the whole conducted with moderation, it inevitably brought in its train, want, loss of trade, and the dislocation of ordinary modes of life. The proportion of the population who actually fought in the war was very small, but in counties where fighting was carried on there can have been few if any of the inhabitants who were not indirectly affected by it. The graphic account of Adam Martindale of the disaster which it brought upon his family may be quoted.
"Things were now woefully altered from the worst from what I had formerly known them. My sister was married to a noted royalist, and going to live about two miles from Lathom which the Parliament forces accounted their enemy's headquarters, they were sadly plundered by those forces passing along the road wherein they dwelt. The great trade that my father and two of my brothers had long driven was quite dead; for who would either build or repair a house when he could not sleep a night in it with quiet and safety? My brother Henry, who was then about 24 years of age, knew not where to hide his head; for my Lord of Derby's officers had taken up a custom of summoning such as he and many older persons upon pain of death to appear at general musters, and thence to force them away with such weapons as they had if they were but pitchforks to Bolton, the rear being brought up with troopers that had commission to shoot such as lagged behind; so as the poor countrymen seemed to be in a dilemma of death either by the troopers if they went not on, or by the great and small shot out of the town if they did."[180]
This is probably not an isolated but a typical case. If the families of the gentry were divided among themselves, so also would be those of the yeomen and the villagers. Royalists in Parliamentarian country, and Parliamentarians in the royalist districts, would have an unhappy time. The royalists in Manchester would no doubt be liable to plunder. The estates of Parliamentarian partisans which lay in the west of the county, as that of the Ashhursts' near Lathom, and of Rigby near Preston, were fair game for the royalists, and became quite worthless to their owners. In addition to local burdens there came, as the war proceeded, pressure from headquarters. The royalists' estates were sequestered, and for the Parliamentarians the Assessments became a growing burden. As a local means of raising resources the most obvious was the levying of contributions on estates, and this was the means first resorted to. The Order authorising it in Lancashire was made by the House of Lords on January 26th, 1642‑3. Twelve of the leaders were named assessors, any three of whom had power to assess the inhabitants of the county at a sum not greater than that of one-twentieth of their estate; resistance might be met by the sale of the objector's goods, and if necessary by the use of force.[181] In the following August an Order was for the first time passed for raising money for the payment of the army by a weekly assessment on the whole country. The list is composed of 52 counties and towns in England and 12 in Wales, Lancashire being assessed at £500 weekly, Yorkshire at £1,060/10/- (York £62/10/- in addition), and Cheshire at £175 (Chester £62 in addition). The weekly sums were to be paid for two months "unless the King's army shall be disbanded in the meantime."[182]
In February, 1644‑5, an Ordinance was passed for the maintenance of the Scotch army at £21,000 per month for four months, to begin on March 1st. This time Lancashire was assessed at £730 and Cheshire at £255; on August 15th the Ordinance was continued for four months dating from the 1st July. The reason for this assessment of the money was that the Sequestrations, on which it had originally been charged, were quite unable to bear their share.[183]