The Commons also ordered that a public thanksgiving to God for the deliverance of Manchester should be observed in all the churches and chapels in Lancashire. The fortifications were now strengthened, and Manchester became the recognised headquarters of the Parliamentary army in this county, and the Earl of Derby, on his return from Warwickshire, took up his position at Warrington, and at the same time garrisoned Wigan. The Manchester people now raised several troops in their immediate neighbourhood, which were occasionally employed to disarm any place which it was thought might be used against them; thus the town of Bury was disarmed, although it belonged to the Earl; and whilst accomplishing this feat, they took the surplice from the church there and put it on the back of one of the soldiers, and "caused him to rid in the cart the arms were caried in, to be matter of sport and laughter to the behoulders." Probably out of a spirit of revenge, the Manchester people rased to the foundations the house of Sir Edward Mosley, called the Lodge, where the Earl of Derby was quartered during the siege. At the college they established a manufactory of gunpowder. In December the Earl of Derby called a meeting of some of the leaders on his side, and they resolved to raise £8,700, to be assessed on the several hundreds of the county, and appointed collectors and treasurers for the same, and they also fixed the pay to be given to the forces raised; the rates were: captains of foot, 10s. a day; lieutenants, 4s.; "ancients" (_i.e._ standard-bearers), 3s. Horse soldiers received rather higher pay, varying from a captain's 15s. a day to a trooper's 2s. 6d. per diem, while sergeants were paid 1s. 6d., drummers 1s. 3d., corporals 1s., and common soldiers 9d. During the rest of the winter, except here and there a skirmish, nothing of any great importance took place in Lancashire between the two parties, but in almost all the towns active preparations were made and garrisons stationed. Preston, Blackburn, Wigan, Bolton, and other boroughs, all assumed a warlike aspect. Some of the miniature wars which took place have a comic aspect, as when Sir Gilbert Hoghton, on December 24, marched a body of men all the way to within a quarter of a mile of Blackburn in order to disarm that town, where they halted, when one of his men, having a small piece of ordnance, "plaied" most of the night; but the only damage he did was to knock the bottom out of a frying-pan. The recorder of this goes on to say, "they were afraid of coming near one another," and upon Christmas night Sir Gilbert withdrew his forces, and "his souldiers and clubmen were glad of it, that they might eate their Christmas pyes at home."[136]