In this same month the Derbyshire committee were ordered to send sixty of their horse to Pontefract to help in the siege, and to join in the resistance to the invasion from Scotland. On August 18th came the rout of the great army of the Scots, under the Duke of Hamilton, at Preston. The defeated cavaliers disbanded themselves in Derbyshire, dispersing in all directions. Considerable numbers of the Scotch infantry were gradually arrested, having vainly endeavoured to conceal themselves amid the hills and dales of the wild Peak district. One of the most terrible episodes of the strife in the Midlands occurred in the then large church of Chapel-en-le-Frith. A vast number of the Scotch prisoners were crowded into the church, with the shocking result thus curtly entered in the registers:— “1648 Sept: 11. There came to this town of Scots army, led by the Duke of Hambleton & squandered by Colonell Lord Cromwell sent hither prisoners from Stopford under the conduct of Marshall Edward Matthews, said to be 1500 in number put into ye church Sept: 14. They went away Sept: 30 following. There were buried of them before the rest went away 44 persons, & more buried Oct. 2 who were not able to march, & the same thyt died by the way before they came to Cheshire 10 & more.” Space must be found for a far less tragic incident that occurred in connection with another Derbyshire church in the south of the county earlier in this strife. When the Royalists were making a special effort to regain their hold on Wingfield Manor, Colonel Eyre, with his regiment of 200 men, marching from Staffordshire, passed the night in the church of Boyleston. Major Saunders, a local Derbyshire leader on the Parliament side, heard of this night encampment, and with a small troop of horse surrounded the church, and raising a simultaneous shout at all the windows and doors demanded the instant surrender of all the Royalists under pain of immediate fire. Colonel Eyre’s men, startled from their sleep, were compelled to surrender; they were ordered to come out one by one through the small priest’s door on the south side of the chancel, and as each stepped forth he was seized and stripped of his arms—“and soe,” wrote Major Saunders, “we took men, collours, and all without loss of one man on either side.” As to the general sympathy of this shire with the Commonwealth proceedings, even after the execution of the King, the Commission of the Peace in 1650 shows how large a proportion of the old county gentlemen were content to accept commissions at the hands of the new rulers. It includes such names as Sir Francis Burdett, Sir Edward Coke, Sir Edward Leach, Sir Samuel Sleigh, Sir John Gell, Nicholas Leeke, John Mundy, Robert Wilmot, Christopher Horton, James Abney, Anthony Morewood, and Robert Eyre. Among the High Sheriffs under the Commonwealth after this date were John Stanhope, of Elvaston, George Sitwell, of Renishaw, and John Ferrers, of Walton.