Читать книгу History of the Fylde of Lancashire онлайн

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Sir Thomas Tyldesley accompanied the army of Prince Rupert to York, near to where the sanguinary and famous battle of Marston Moor, in which no less than sixty thousand men were engaged on both sides, was fought on the 2nd of July, 1644. Oliver Cromwell commanded the parliamentarians in person, and after a fierce struggle discomfited the troops of Prince Rupert and drove them in confusion from the field. Sir Thomas Tyldesley retreated with his shattered regiment in hot haste towards Amounderness, where he made diligent search for arms and ammunition, but hearing that the enemy, under Sir John Meldrum, was marching in quest of him he hurried to the banks of the Ribble, and crossed the ford into the Fylde. This latter incident happened towards the end of the week, and on Saturday he was joined in his ambush by the immense royalist force of Colonel Goring, so great indeed that “before the last companies had marched over the bridge at St. Michael’s Church the first company was judged to be at Kirkham.”[40] There is probably some little exaggeration in the quoted statement, but even allowing it to be verbally correct, there can be no doubt that it is unintentionally misleading, as the extreme length of road covered would be due more to the wide intervals between the companies and the straggling manner in which they proceeded than to their actual numerical strength. Nevertheless the detachment, chiefly composed of cavalry, was enormous, and completely inundated the towns and villages in the parishes of Poulton, Kirkham, and Lytham. The men were lodged twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, and even sixty in a house, and on the Sunday morning they set out on an errand of pilfering without respect to persons, pillaging those who were friendly with as much eagerness and apparent satisfaction as others who were inimical to their cause, an impartiality so little appreciated by the inhabitants that they are said to have blessed the Roundheads by comparison with these insatiate freebooters. Horses, money, clothes, sheets, everything that was portable or could be driven, was greedily seized upon, and, in spite of threats and entreaties, remorselessly borne away. Hundreds of households were stripped not only of their ornaments, bedding, etc., but even of the very implements on which the family depended for subsistence. It is in truth no figure of speech to state that by far the larger share of the people were reduced to utter and seemingly hopeless destitution, and grateful indeed were they when their portion of the parliamentary grant of collections in the metropolis, before mentioned, was distributed amongst them, coming like manna from the heavens to comfort their desolated homes. To add insult to injury the graceless troopers compelled their entertainers to employ the Sabbath in winnowing corn in the fields for their chargers, and even refused to allow them to erect the usual curtains to protect the grain from being carried away by the high wind, so that the loss and waste amounted to barely less than the quantity utilised as fodder, and completely exhausted the fruits of their harvest. Sir Thomas Tyldesley, Lord Molyneux, and others of the leaders, fixed their lodgment near the residence of a gentleman named Richard Harrison, and were supplied with necessaries from Mowbreck Hall. Freckleton marsh was the rendezvous, and there the entire forces assembled on the morning of Monday, but were compelled to remain until one o’clock at noon before the Ribble was fordable, when they took their departure, to the intense joy of all those who had trembled for their lives and suffered ruin in their small properties during their brief sojourn. Sir John Meldrum appeared in the district only a few hours after the royalists had left, and thus the Fylde had again a narrow escape of adding one more to the long list of unnatural battles, most truly described as suicidal massacres of the nation, where men ignoring the ties of friendship or kinship imbrued their swords in the blood of each other with a relentless and inhuman savagery, reviving as it seemed the horrid butcheries of the dark ages. Sir John Meldrum hastened in the direction of the retreating foe, but failed to overtake them.