The death of the Royalist governor, Colonel Dalby, who succeeded Colonel Roger Molineux, can have had no part in causing the surrender, for, according to Pilkington, he was traitorously shot by a deserter, who had recognized him despite his disguise of a common soldier, and who is said to have put his musket through a hole in the wall of the porter’s lodge and shot him in the face. Pilkington also asserts that one of the cannon-balls which he saw weighed 32 lbs.! This was in 1789. The surrendered garrison was a resourceful one it appears, as the besiegers either having cut off the water supply (presumably in pipes) or else seized the source of this necessary fluid, they promptly dug a well in the south courtyard, and therefrom secured a sufficient supply. This well fell in about 1850, and the hole was filled up. An old account of the capture of the manor house runs thus:— “Colonell Gell finding that his ordinance would do noe good against the Mannor and understanding that Major General Craford had foure great peeces, sent two of his officers unto him to desier him to send them for three or foure days for battering; and in soe doinge he would doe the countrey good service, because it was a place that could not bee otherwise taken without they were pined (starved) out.” The stirring times of war now left the house, and its further use as a fortress was nullified by an order for its dismantling on June 23rd, 1646. The fabric of the house now went from bad to worse as it passed from one owner to another. Twenty years after the order for its dismantling was received, it was occupied by one Imanuel Halton, an auditor of the Duke of Norfolk. As a man of culture and learning he was more or less distinguished, being especially noted as an astronomer; while allowing much of the fabric to fall into ruins, he amused himself by decorating the crumbling walls with sun-dials, two of which remain. A piece of gross vandalism was perpetrated by this worthy, for he converted the magnificent banqueting hall into a two-floored dwelling-house, with chimneys in the centre, and made ugly structural alterations to the north windows to suit his convenience. The Halton family continued to enjoy the air of Wingfield, and to pull the manor house about, for the next hundred years, till, in 1744, the “powers that were” decided to pull down the lovely building, which they utilized as a convenient quarry from which to obtain stone for the erection of a truly ugly house—described as “a small box at the foot of the hill”—which is the present Hall. After this disgraceful exploit, the progress of decay was practically unchecked, and at this day the buildings are deteriorating more and more rapidly under the changes of our capricious climate. In the _Topographer_, by Shaw, vol. i., of 1789 (only fifteen years after the removal of the family residence to the new hall), it is stated that the roof was gone from the banqueting hall, and that all