He also explained how he had met John Lilburne, the man he most admired, and under whose command he now served. Lilburne, said Simon, had lost most of his possessions at Newark, but still possessed his political integrity. Now that he had found someone who he could follow, Simon intended to stay with Lilburne and fight for his political ideal of freedom and equality. Finding Lilburne in the manner he had was, he claimed, nothing short of destiny.
I was far from convinced of the wisdom of Simon’s plan, but knew better than to contradict him, for I was sure it would get me nowhere. Nonetheless, I would have been failing in my duties as a brother had I not drawn his attention to two things in particular.
“But what about your apprenticeship?” I said, “and Rose Bailey? She is no doubt waiting for you to return in Nantwich.”
“I have written to Rose,” said Simon. “I have told her I will not forsake her and that I will return for her as soon as my work is complete, but I must follow the path God has laid out for me. As for Simkins, even if he were to have me back after losing his horse and a cartload of shoes, I don’t think I am cut out to be a shoemaker, do you? I will follow my fate, whichever way it takes me.”
And so that was that. Two days after riding into Lathom, Simon departed again, with no promise of when we would see him again.
As it turned out, my brother’s brief visit was the catalyst for our own departure. With the siege floundering and Bootle gone, there was little need for us to remain.
“Our work here is done,” I said to Alexander, one morning towards the middle of May. “Marc, although not fully recovered from his ordeal, is at least fit enough to travel, and Rigby has no need of our services anymore. If we are to complete our task, there is but one place for us to go. We must ride to Bolton.”
Chapter 40
Bolton – Monday May 27th, 1644
Captain Edward Rawsthorne lowered himself into the trench opposite the postern gate and scratched his head. He had risen just before first light, expecting to lead the assault that would finally break the siege of Lathom House. He had envisaged a glorious rout of the enemy and a triumphal march through the rebel siege works, but it was not to be. Instead, he felt deflated and cheated, for the trenches that surrounded the house were completely deserted.
Bending down, he picked up a discarded powder flask and inspected it, before flinging it in frustration at the side of the trench.
“Have a care, Edward,” said a voice from behind him. “There is little to be gained from that. They are gone, slunk away into the woods like foxes in the night.”
Rawsthorne turned round and looked upwards, to see the familiar figure of Captain Henry Ogle, behind whom stood a group of musketeers, perhaps thirty strong, their weapons at the ready as they cast careful eyes along the length of the trench. They had been sent out to protect the two officers, lest the apparent absence of besiegers in the trench turn out to be little more than a ruse designed to catch them unawares.
“Aye, that is the truth of it, Henry,” said Rawsthorne. “Just what you would expect from a man like Rigby.”
On reflection, Rawsthorne had to admit it was hardly surprising that Colonel Rigby had decided to terminate the siege. After all, for the past week the signs had been evident that the colonel had been angling for a withdrawal.
On the previous Thursday, Rigby had sent over a captain called Moseley with a demand for Lady Derby to vacate the house. No vindictiveness – no negotiating points – just a simple demand. When she refused, Moseley had immediately offered her the very same terms she herself had demanded of Fairfax at the start of the siege. It was then that she knew she had won, and simply instructed Moseley to tell Rigby to negotiate directly with her husband.
Her stance had been vindicated that very same evening, when one of her messengers got into the house by shooting the sole sentry standing in his way. The earl, she was told, was in Cheshire with Prince Rupert, whose army was poised to cut a swathe through Lancashire on its way to relieve Lathom. It was no wonder that Rigby had made himself scarce.
On the Sunday, during the midday change of watch, the lookouts atop the Eagle Tower had noticed that the new watch was much reduced. Lady Derby had taken this as a sign of weakened morale, and so plans had been set for a final assault to end the siege. The men of the garrison had expected to win, but they had not anticipated that the besiegers would cut and run in the middle of the night.
“It is indeed a shame,” said Ogle, “that we cannot teach that cowardly dog a lesson once and for all.”
“You are right,” replied Rawsthorne, with a smile, “but have no fear, he will get what is coming to him. In the meantime, we have but one task left to fulfil. Lieutenant Key,” he called, beckoning over a junior officer. “It is time for her ladyship to inspect her property and enjoy this day of triumph. Have Mr Broome prepare her carriage forthwith.”
Chapter 41
Bolton – Tuesday May 28th, 1644
Henry Oulton’s house, Green Acres, was a fair brick mansion with a walled garden and orchards. It stood next to an even bigger property called Private Acres, which was located at the end of Deansgate, the narrow lane which led west from the iron cross at the centre of Bolton.
We arrived there on 15th May and were immediately welcomed by Oulton’s steward, a serious-looking man called Horrocks, and his wife, who clearly saw Marc as their future master and treated him as such.
Oulton himself was a jaundiced, bedridden fellow, who clearly did not have long to live, but his eyes possessed a clarity and steeliness which helped to explain how he had survived so long after Marc’s disappearance. It was as though he had refused to die until his inheritance was secured.
Alexander and I were welcomed into the household as Marc’s rescuers and invited to stay until such time as Bootle was apprehended. Beatrice, having made it clear that she had fallen in love with Lawrence, was also offered accommodation until she was able to be reunited with him. Marc, meanwhile, who continued to recover slowly from his ordeal, was simply delighted to have regained his half-sister as a companion after years of separation.
As it turned out, Bolton, or Bolton le Moors to give it its full name, had little in common with Nantwich other than its approximate size and its reputation as a magnet for all manner of Puritan sympathisers and the overtly godly. In retrospect, I have no idea why I had thought otherwise.
The most obvious difference to two men from the milder climate of Cheshire like Alexander and myself, was that the town, situated in a valley surrounded by open moorland, seemed to be perpetually freezing cold, lending its inhabitants a hardiness and individualism which had stood it in good stead over the years.
The town centre stood on a high bank situated on the inside of a bend in the River Croal. The main street, Churchgate, was a jumble of timber houses, jutting out over a narrow, muddy thoroughfare. At one end, overlooking the bend in the river, was St Peter’s Church, which was being used as a warehouse for storing military equipment. At the other end was the iron cross, next to which stood a large coaching house called The Swan.
From the cross led the town’s three main roads. To the north, the road led down a steep slope called Windy Bank, past a dungeon, to a bridge over the river and the hamlet of Little Bolton. To the south was Bradshawgate, the main road to Manchester, and to the west, Deansgate. Most people lived along these four main thoroughfares, although to the south-west of the cross, between Bradshawgate and Deansgate, was a large area of lanes, thatched houses, and crofts inhabited by Bolton’s poorer townsfolk, many of whom worked in the trade for fustians and cotton wool, for which Bolton had become renowned.
The local people, I quickly learned, were justifiably proud of the fact that they had repelled an attack on their town the previous March. However, I soon realised that the town’s defences, damaged at that time, had not been adequately repaired. A large sconce to the south of the town was completely unusable, whilst the defensive walls and ditch, despite surrounding the vulnerable south and west sid
es of the town, were nothing like the huge earthen banks and wooden walkways that we had built at Nantwich, and which had become so instrumental to us surviving our own siege. The end of each of the main roads was protected by little more than a series of posts and heavy chains.
Apart from this, the town was only defended by around five hundred local militia and a troop of horse, so it was difficult to see how it would be possible to repel a determined attack by a large army. When we heard that Prince Rupert was on the march through Cheshire, I began to fear the worst.
***
As luck would have it, Alexander and I spent two full weeks in Bolton before things came to a head, but when they did, they did so with a vengeance.
Early on the morning of Tuesday 28th May, Colonel Rigby marched into the town with around two thousand men. The colonel, it transpired, had abandoned the siege at Lathom the previous Sunday, as soon as he became aware that Prince Rupert was on the march. Some of his forces had gone with Colonel Holland to Manchester and others with John Moore to Liverpool, leaving Rigby with only his own units raised from the Amounderness Hundred. The colonel had marched to Eccleston Green near Chorley, and from there, with a view to avoiding Rupert’s much larger force, he had headed towards the perceived safety of the nearest garrison.
Although many of the townsfolk of Bolton cheered and ran to shake the hands of Rigby’s men as they marched past Green Acres towards the cross and the taverns on Churchgate, I began to wonder whether Rigby’s presence might not actually be a portent of disaster. After all, five hundred clubmen could do little against the might of Rupert’s army, and a quick surrender would have been no disgrace, but two thousand five hundred men? Would they not be inclined to fight? And would a town protecting the likes of Rigby not be a certain target for the worst kind of retribution?
The only advantage as far as I could see was that we were able to seek out Lawrence again. We managed to spot him as he passed Green Acres and were able to offer him and some of his men billets for the night.
The next thing that happened – the very next morning, in fact – was that William Bootle turned up. After having waited for him for two whole weeks, Alexander and I had almost begun to wonder whether, in fact, he had found out about Jane Bootle’s demise and had made good his escape.
However, sometime during mid-morning, just as Marc, Lawrence, Alexander, and I were leaving the house, in order to stroll into town, we saw him, as plain as day, walking down the street towards us. Perhaps he had been on his way to Green Acres to ask for an audience with Henry Oulton, but we never found out, for Bootle spotted us at exactly the same moment, and bolted in panic before we could reach him, escaping through one of the gardens on the south side of Deansgate and into the orchards beyond.
“Don’t worry,” said Lawrence, calmly. “Let him run. He won’t get far. The town is full of Rigby’s men. Someone will recognise him.”
Chapter 42
Bolton – Tuesday May 28th, 1644
James Stanley, the seventh Earl of Derby, rode over the crest of Great Lever Moor and cast his gaze down the broad valley of the River Croal, towards Bolton. It was raining steadily, and large globules of water dripped from his hat onto his thigh, seeping through his breeches. It was a filthy day, but on this particular afternoon, he would not allow such a trifling matter to dampen the brightness of his mood. He could scarcely believe his luck.
That morning, Prince Rupert had sent Colonel Henry Tillier and his greencoats forward to scout the route into the place known as the Geneva of the North. They had reached the moorland overlooking the town but had been astounded to find the place crawling with roundheads – and not just any old group of roundheads. With the exception of around five hundred clubmen and local militia, the men defending Bolton were none other than Colonel Alexander Rigby and his men from Amounderness, the very same force, who, until recently, had not only persecuted and besieged the earl’s wife and family, but also caused great damage to his ancestral home at Lathom.
In truth, things had not gone perfectly for the earl since his return from the Isle of Man. To his disappointment, Rupert had refused his request to be given a command of his own, but at least he had been given the honour of riding as a gentleman volunteer in the prince’s own troop of horse, who, it had to be said, were in enormously good cheer.
Wiping the water from his face, he looked down towards the town and liked what he saw. The enemy had formed a solid line around the earthen defences, but the mud walls thrown up a year ago were less than a pike’s length in height and clearly not designed to keep out a force of the likes of that which approached the town now. The great sconce to the south of the earthworks, in disrepair since Derby’s own failed attack the previous year, lay deserted and broken, and the force manning the walls, he knew, consisted largely of raw recruits, demotivated from their experiences at Lathom.
Derby watched with a smile as a troop of horse – from a distance it looked like Shuttleworth’s – began to move bravely out towards them, in order to vex the prince’s own blue-coated regiment of foot – for the earl knew that Rupert would soon order his own horse to engage them. The moment he had waited for was finally approaching. This was not just about vindication for his failure to take the town a year ago, but the opportunity to make Rigby pay dearly for a year of persecution.
All he needed now to make his day complete was the presence of the traitorous porter who had gained his trust and then turned his coat, advising Rigby on the layout of Lathom House, so that the colonel could bombard it with stones and grenades. Yes, he mused, the sight of William Bootle among those defending the town would make vengeance all the sweeter
Chapter 43
Bolton – Tuesday May 28th, 1644
The first we realised for certain what that fateful day would bring was at around two in the afternoon, when Rupert’s forces were spotted traversing the high ground to the south of the town. The thin drizzle that had fallen for most of the morning had turned into a more solid downpour, transforming the already sodden streets into a morass of mud, but as soon as the shouts and alarms went up, men began to appear from their houses to join Rigby’s forces. Some had guns of their own, but most were armed with pikes, axes, and clubs. Marc was still too weak to fight, so he stayed ensconced inside the house, but when Lawrence went to join his unit, Alexander and I followed Horrocks to a shed, where we found an assortment of weapons. Alexander, being of substantial bulk, chose a pike, whereas I made do with a dagger and a club similar to that with which I used to dispense my constabulary duties at home. All three of us then headed down Deansgate to the cross, and then south down Bradshawgate towards where most of the men were heading.
On the horizon, I could see a mass of bodies moving across the crest of the ridge at Great Lever. It was like watching a colony of ants, although somebody else likened it to a cloud racing across the sky. Presently, though, the mass began to form itself into individual units, each searching for ways in which to approach the town.
Alexander and I followed Horrocks to the end of Bradshawgate, where we lined up along the inadequate-looking earthworks and waited for the charge. I noticed that our own troop of horse, under Colonel Shuttleworth, had already issued out of the town with a view to intercepting the royalist foot, but Prince Rupert’s cavalry reacted quickly and charged itself. In amongst the melee, I thought I caught sight of Rupert’s famous dog, Boye, barking and yapping at the men and horses. Then, out of the crowd, appeared a figure I had seen before, heading straight for our own cornet. I watched, transfixed, as the Earl of Derby cut down the junior officer with his own sword and retreated amongst raucous cheers with Shuttleworth’s colours in his possession. Our horse, having lost shape, tried to reform itself, but, left with the option of being overwhelmed or living to fight another day, Shuttleworth called for an orderly retreat and sped off over the moorland to the west.
Once the field was clear of horses, we were able to see exactly what units of foot were lined up against us. Immediately opposit
e us to the south were Prince Rupert’s own bluecoats, alongside Henry Warren’s Irish regiment, who I recognised from Nantwich. To the west of the town were two further regiments, including a great crowd of redcoats, who I later found out were under the command of Sir Thomas Tyldesley.
And then, all of a sudden, they were upon us. Firelocks and musketeers with matchlock muskets fired at us to keep us at bay, whilst teams of pikemen attacked us directly, these in turn shielding groups of men with ladders.
The fighting was much more intense than what I had experienced at Nantwich, but our men stuck manfully to the task and repulsed their first attack at considerable loss to the enemy. Quite a few of our men lay wounded and dying, but there must have been at least a hundred dead royalists lying in the sodden ditch or on the side of the earthworks.
To the west, the royalist red-coated regiment had managed to break through our lines into the town, but they too had eventually been overwhelmed and forced to retreat through the pouring rain.
I was astounded. Considering that our forces consisted largely of Rigby’s battered recruits from Lathom, our men had fought valiantly and had been able to achieve a result beyond all expectations. Our good fortune could not last forever, though. New royalist units were now being brought forward to replace those regiments who had taken a mauling, and I was beginning to wonder how Alexander and I would be able to extricate ourselves from the situation with our skins intact.
It was then that our forces made a fatal mistake. A group of Rigby’s men, flush with success, dragged forward an Irish prisoner they had taken and decided to hang him as a papist in full view of the royalist forces. An eerie silence descended on both sides as the man was led screaming to his fate, but then, when his struggling had stopped, an angry roar erupted from the royalist ranks, rising to a crescendo of noise as the enemy charged again. To the west, Tyldesley’s red-coated regiment was still in the field, and, as I glanced towards them, I was surprised to notice Lord Derby, who was leading them in person. Facing us to the south, however, was a new opponent, Rupert’s bluecoats having been replaced by a fresher-looking regiment wearing green tunics.
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