It is not necessary to dwell upon the details of this unfortunate and ill-conducted enterprise, in the course of which James III. was proclaimed in town and village, in Warkworth and Alnwick, in Penrith and Appleby, Kendal and Lancaster, to the final catastrophe of the little band at Preston. There, hemmed in by the government troops, the brave and devoted friends of the royal exiles, who had been led into this premature effort contrary to their better judgments, and went forth with a determined loyalty which good or bad report could not subdue, saw reason to regret, when too late, their misplaced confidence in their leaders. Already they saw themselves about to be sacrificed to the divided counsels of their comrades and the incapacity of Foster, their general. Defensive means imperfectly planned, and hastily carried out, enabled them to hold the approaches to the town for three or four days against the Brunswickers, whom they gallantly repulsed, in a determined attack upon their barricades. But overmatched by disciplined troops; out-generalled, and out-numbered; and finding resistance to be unavailing; on the morning of Monday the 14th of October they surrendered at discretion to the forces sent to oppose them. Being assembled in the market place to the number of 1700, they delivered up their arms, and became prisoners. The young Earl was sent to London, which he reached on the 9th of December, and was conducted to the Tower on the capital charge of high treason. Unavailing efforts were made by his wife and friends to save him. It appears that on the 20th of February his life was offered to him by two noblemen who came to him in the tower, in the name of the King, if he would acknowledge the title of George I. and conform to the Protestant religion: but these terms were refused by him. The offer of his life and fortune was repeated on the scaffold, but he answered that the terms "would be too dear a purchase." The means proposed to him, he looked upon as "inconsistent with honour and conscience, and therefore I rejected them." He went to the block with firmness and composure: and his behaviour was resolute and sedate. In an address which he delivered on the scaffold, he said "If that Prince who now governs had given me my life, I should have thought myself obliged never more to have taken up arms against him." And the axe closed, by a "violent and vengeful infliction," the brief career of the beloved, devoted, and generous Earl of Derwentwater. He was twenty-seven years of age.