[17]. Halsall.
The besiegers now began to lose heart. Captains and men deserted the camp; the rain, which fell incessantly that spring, destroyed their trenches, and the undertaking throughout had brought them little credit. On the 23rd May the Countess was once more required, in insolent terms, to capitulate, “and to submit to the mercy of Parliament.” Lady Derby replied with a bitter smile, “You mistake. You mean the cruelties, not the mercies.”
“No, madam,” replied the puzzled delegate, “the mercies of Parliament.”
“The mercies of the wicked are cruel,” quickly responded she. Then she added that it was not Parliament, but its corrupt agents with whom she refused to treat. “Let them make terms with my lord,” she went on; “failing that, they will have neither me nor my friends while there is life in us.” When the deputy persisted, she said: “This insolent rebel shall make no more proposals. If he does, his messenger shall hang at my gates.”
For the last time the ambassador retired. Nothing daunted the Countess. She paid no heed to all the gloomy rumours which reached her of the Royalist reverses. Prince Rupert, on the other hand, had vanquished the rebels at Newark, and was now marching to the assistance of Lord Newcastle, who was at York, menaced on all sides. The Earl of Derby implored the Prince to take his way by Lancashire, and relieve Lathom House and his wife and children. He promised the troops £3000, which he had borrowed on the jewels of his wife, she having contrived to find a way of conveying them to him during the siege.
A few hours after the departure of the discomfited Parliamentarian delegate late at night, one of Lady Derby’s couriers arrived at Lathom House. To obtain his entrance he had killed the enemy’s sentinel. The news which he brought the Countess was that Prince Rupert was on the way to the relief of Lathom House, and that my Lord Derby accompanied him.
Deep thankfulness pervaded all hearts in Lathom House. The Countess however, annexing a leaf from the enemy’s book of axioms, trusted in God, “but kept her powder dry.” While rendering heartfelt thanks to Heaven, she abated not one tittle of her unceasing vigilance.
In silence now the Parliamentarians guarded their trenches. The sound of their mocking rhymes and songs was heard no more. The prowess and successes of Cromwell and of Fairfax were no longer vaunted. No more was said about taking the King in a mouse-trap. On the evening of the 26th May the guard was so carelessly mounted, that Lady Derby resolved on a grand sally next day, beginning at three o’clock in the morning.
But Prince Rupert was at hand—Prince Rupert, the terror of his foes, if not also, like that Parliamentarian mortar, the terror of some of his friends—and at one o’clock the Parliamentarian soldiers took up their arms, folded their tents, and silently departed from Lathom, after a four months’ fruitless siege, the loss of five hundred men, against the loss of six of the besieged, and the expending of one hundred barrels of gunpowder. Like a wise man, economical of his blood, Rigby stood no longer upon much order of going, but went at once.
Still foresight and prudence detained the Prince and the Earl to punish the enemy upon the way, and to destroy chances of any speedy or sudden return to the attack; but it was not long before the victorious Lady of Lathom stood at her gates to receive her husband, and to bid him welcome to the home which she had so gallantly defended.