The breach between the King and his Parliament gradually became widened, and early in 1642 Charles removed his Court to York, where he received a petition from Lancashire signed by 64 knights, 55 divines, 740 gentlemen, and about 7,000 freeholders, in which they express their satisfaction that the measures taken by the King had "weakened the hopes of the sacrilegious devourers of the churches patrimonie, and provided against all Popish impieties and idolatries and the growing danger of Anabaptists, Brownists, and other novellists," and then proceed to say that there is one thing which "sads our hearts," which is "the distance and misunderstanding between Your Majesty and Your Parliament." To check the strong party of Royalists in the county, orders were issued to levy fines on the estates of the so-called "malignants," and other means adopted to, if possible, render them powerless when the struggle actually began. These precautions, however, were taken too late to be really effective. On January 20, 1642, the King made a last attempt to come to terms with the House of Commons, and failing to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, Parliament ceased to seek for the royal assent to their Bills, and by an "ordinance" of their own took the entire control of the militia. In the meantime the King went to Yorkshire, but was refused admission to Hull. Both parties were now making active preparation for an appeal to arms, and when the King on June 2 indignantly refused to hand over all his powers to Parliament and become a King in name only, the negotiations between the two came to an end, and practically the Civil War began. On August 22, 1642, Charles reared his standard on the walls of Nottingham Castle, and his herald made the proclamation of war. Parliament now appealed to the King to lower his standard, but it was of no avail, and on September 9 the Commons published a declaration setting forth their view of the causes of the war. The great civil strife which followed was not one war, but many wars. In Lancashire these were for the most part carried on by officers and troops raised in the various districts, assisted sometimes by the local militia; sometimes they besieged a town, and at other times only attacked a private house, but in every case the issue was one and the same--the King or the Parliament. Some time before actual war was declared at Nottingham and London, the troubles had begun in Lancashire.