Whilst these discussions agitated the City, Fairfax marched on Goring, who quitted Blackheath, crossed the Thames into Essex with five thousand horse, where he was joined by Lord Capel, with Royalists from Hertfordshire, and Sir Charles Lucas, with a body of horse from Chelmsford. They concentrated their united force at Colchester, where they determined to hold out till the advance of the Scots, and thus detain the commander-in-chief in the south. The Scots were now in reality on the march. The Duke of Hamilton had not been able to muster more than a fourth of his promised forty thousand. Though he proclaimed everywhere that Charles had promised to take the Covenant and uphold the Presbyterian religion, Argyll and the old covenanting body wholly distrusted these assurances; the Assembly of the Kirk demanded proofs of the king's engagement; the ministers from the pulpits denounced the curse of Meroz on all who engaged in this unholy war, and the women cursed the duke as he passed, and pelted him with stones from their windows. The English Royalists under Langdale, about four thousand brave Cavaliers, had surprised Berwick and Carlisle, and awaited with impatience Hamilton's arrival. Lambert, the Parliamentary general, advanced and besieged Carlisle, and Hamilton was urged to advance and relieve it. He sent forward a detachment, and on the 8th of July arrived himself, being already supported by three thousand veterans from the Scottish army in Ireland, and, now uniting with Sir Marmaduke Langdale, he presented a formidable force. Lambert retired at his approach, and had Hamilton been a man of any military talent, he might have struck an effective blow. But from the moment that he crossed the Border, he appeared to have lost all energy. His army was paralysed by internal dissensions. The Scottish Presbyterian soldiers were scandalised at having to fight side by side with Langdale's Prelatists and Papists, whom they had been accustomed to see ranged against them as the enemies of the Covenant. In forty days he had advanced only eighty miles, and when he reached the left bank of the Ribble, near Preston, Cromwell had reduced Pembroke, marched rapidly northward through Gloucester, Warwick, Leicester, to Nottingham, where he left his prisoners with Colonel Hutchinson, governor of the castle, and soon joined Lambert at Otley Park, and forced back Langdale from Clitheroe on the main body at Preston. Hamilton at the last moment was all unprepared. Monroe, with his veterans, lay still at Kirkby Lonsdale. Yet Hamilton, with his fourteen thousand, should have been a match for Cromwell, Lambert, and Lilburne's nine thousand. But Cromwell attacked them with such vigour that, after a hard battle of six hours, he routed the whole force. The Cavaliers fought like lions, and only retreated from hedge to hedge before the foe; they called repeatedly on the Scots for reinforcements and ammunition, but not being able to get either, retreated into the town.