Before the King left Lincoln, he had directed the Sheriff to search for concealed arms and to make himself master of all the county magazines. The Lincoln magazine had been secured by Lord Willoughby of Parham, who had wisely removed it before the King came. In many cases the local magazines were in the charge of the county gentry; and two of these—Sir Philip Tyrwhit of Stainfield and Sir William Pelham of Brocklesby—had declined to deliver them up to Lord Willoughby according to Parliament’s injunctions. The Sheriff now proceeded by warrant to search the houses of members of Parliament opposed to the King; and a store of muskets was seized at the house of Sir Edward Ayscough at South Kelsey and sent to the Bishop’s Palace. A warrant was also issued to seize Captain Lister of Coleby, who had accepted a commission in the Parliament’s forces; and he was taken by a troop of horse, who forced an entrance into his house, to the King at Nottingham. Shortly after, while the Sheriff was engaged in conveying a magazine to Lincoln, he was himself arrested by a superior force under Sir Anthony Irby, M.P. for Boston, and carried to London, where, being examined at the bar of the House on October 8 as to his late proceedings and his part in the petition, he was committed to the Tower on the charge of high treason. Here he remained for over three years, being unable to pay the fine of £2000 which was imposed upon him; but in 1645 he obtained his liberty under an exchange of prisoners. If the Sheriff was arrested near the end of September (the date is uncertain), his taking a magazine to Lincoln would imply that the city remained Royalist for over two months after the King’s visit. Clarendon says that Charles passed through it once more about August 20, two days before he set up his standard at Nottingham, and that he helped himself to some of the arms of the Lincoln trained bands. Apparently the increasing certainty of war was doing much to cool the ardour of some of his supporters. The force which he had raised on his first visit was limited, no doubt by the stipulations of the more cautious, to three months’ service, and that only within the county. But his more eager partisans saw from the first that this would be useless, and presented a petition to him at York that Lincolnshire might co-operate with other counties in his support. This petition was published as a tract with a view to committing the subscribers of the undertaking to more extended service; but it was answered by a counter-tract,[114] in which the writer pleads the necessity for the formation of a regiment (1) to keep order in a time of slack government; (2) to protect the sea-coast against foreign invasion; and (3) to ward off incursions from soldiers in neighbouring counties. He states that Sir John Hotham’s Hull garrison had already committed acts of violence in the north of the county; but protests that those like-minded with himself were not “malignant, either against the