During the preceding months the Vale of the Weaver had been harassed and made the scene of many a predatory descent from Capel's forces, aided occasionally by the Royalists from Cholmondeley; the country round, but Nantwich more especially, had been plundered, the rich meadows and pasture lands which had been brought under cultivation in pre-Reformation times by the monks of Combermere being more productive than other parts of the county offered a strong inducement; whilst the inhabitants, having for the most part sided with the Republican party, were accounted as fitting subjects for Royalist vengeance. Moss House, near Burley Dam, Dorfold Hall, Acton, Ravensmoor, and Sound are named as being plundered of horses, cows, young beasts, and household stuffs during the occasional absences of General Brereton from head-quarters. In retaliation, Cholmondeley Hall was itself attacked, the Nantwich troops issuing from their entrenchments by the north road; then, passing Mr. Wilbraham's house at Dorfold, they quitted the Chester Road and proceeded by Monk's Lane, passing Acton Church and Vicarage--the latter at the time the residence of Edward Burghall, the Puritan diarist--and thence over Ravensmoor to the stone cross near where stood the entrance to Woodhay, the owner of which, Sir Richard Wilbraham, had died only a few days before, a prisoner in the castle at Shrewsbury. Soon Cholmondeley was reached. The Royalists, being apprised of their intention, turned out to meet them, and an engagement took place, when the Cavaliers, having sustained some loss, withdrew to the shelter of the hall, and their opponents returned to Nantwich with a booty of six hundred horse. Shortly after this some of the Nantwich men sustained a severe reverse. The troops left in possession of Whitchurch, having imprudently advanced beyond Hanmer into Wales, were met by Lord Capel and the Welsh forces of the King, who had been lying in ambush. They were attacked and dispersed, several of their number being killed or wounded, and many taken prisoners. It was a sorrowful day for them, and Burghall laments that it was "the worst day's work the Nantwich soldiers did from the beginning of the war." It was a sorrowful day elsewhere, for on the preceding day John Hampden-- The noblest Roman of them all, received his death wound on Chalgrove Field, the avenging ball of a Royalist having shivered his vigorous right arm on the very spot where he had first executed the ordinance of the militia and engaged his tenantry and serving men in rebellion, and he then lay at Thame, where, with the grace and dignity of the old Roman, but with the fortitude and trusting faith of the true Christian, he died after six days' agony.