In three successive centuries Lincolnshire has been the scene of civil disturbances, which were closely connected with the general history of the country. The rebellion against Edward IV. headed by Sir Robert Welles of Belleau, the “Lincolnshire Captain,” was closed by the defeat of his force of 30,000 men on March 12, 1470, near Empingham in Rutland. The rising at Louth and Horncastle, which followed on the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536, was quelled within a fortnight; and the only lives lost were those of officials who were killed by the mob, and of the mob-leaders, who were promptly executed. But in the Great Civil War of the seventeenth century, Lincolnshire played a great part, though in ordinary English histories, and even in Clarendon, the struggle within its borders is passed over lightly. It was the debatable ground between the Royalism of the North and the stern Puritanism of the Eastern Association. “From the summer of 1643 to the summer of 1644,” says Lord Morley,[110] “the power of the northern army and the fate of London and the Parliamentary cause turned upon Lincolnshire, the borderland between Yorkshire and the stubborn counties to the south-east.” Here, in the first two years of the war, Cromwell found a favourable training-ground for his invincible Ironsides. Before the war actually began, the temper of this county, as of some others, was rather hesitating and uncertain. It is doubtful whether, out of the twelve members for the shire and its boroughs, the proportion of ten to two against the King truly represented the popular feeling. Under the then existing system an altogether unfair preponderance was given to the towns, which returned ten out of the twelve members; and in London and the eastern towns Puritanism was for the moment all-powerful. The Militia Ordinance of Parliament, which brought matters to a crisis, and was doubtless an encroachment on the King’s prerogative, raised a constitutional question that few could understand. In March 1642, when the dispute on this point had reached an acute stage, a deputation from the Lincolnshire gentry in sympathy with the Parliament presented a petition to the King at Newark on his journey north, in which the question of the moment is not even mentioned. This petition simply prayed the King to reside near his Parliament and listen to their counsels; and in view of their determination to wield the power of the sword, it is not surprising that the King in his reply, delivered at York, asserted that Lincolnshire had been misled, and that he was being driven from his Parliament. The city of Lincoln, though it returned two reforming members, was probably not so Puritan as the other boroughs. It has been well pointed out[111] that a large number of the county gentry, many of whom were Royalists, then possessed houses in Lincoln; and their opinions would naturally be reflected among the tradesmen, who benefited by their presence.