could have no knowledge, and, in defiance of the recognised laws of war and the conditions on which he had surrendered, was pronounced guilty and sentenced to be beheaded at Bolton. Dr. Halley, in his history of “Lancashire Puritanism and Nonconformity,” says that Colonel Bradshaw, notwithstanding that he had voted for the rejection of the Earl’s plea; “earnestly entreated his brother, the Lord President, to obtain a commutation of the punishment,” but, if he did, his efforts were unsuccessful. Seacombe attributed the execution of the Earl to the “inveterate malice” of (President) Bradshaw, Rigby, and Birch, which originated, he says, as to Bradshaw, because of the Earl’s refusing him the Vice-Chamberlainship of Chester;[9] Rigby, because of his ill-success at Lathom; and Birch, in his lordship having trailed him under a hay cart at Manchester on the occasion of the outbreak in July, 1642, by which he got, even among his own party, the epithet of “Lord Derby’s Carter.” He adds that, “Cromwell and Bradshaw had so ordered the matter that when they saw the major part of the House inclined to allow the Earl’s plea, as the Speaker was putting the question, eight or nine of them quitted the House, and those left in it being under the number of forty, no question could be put.” The latter statement, however, is hardly borne out by the _Commons Journal_,[10] which, under date “14 October, 1651,” makes this brief mention of the reception of the Earl’s petition:— Mr. Speaker, by way of report, acquaints the House with a letter which he had received from the Earl of Derby; and the question being put—That the said letter be now read, the House was divided. The yeas went forth, Sir William Brereton and Mr. Ellis tellers for the yeas, with the yeas, 22; Mr. Bond and Major-General Harrison, tellers for the noes, with the noes, 16, so it passed in the affirmative. A letter from the Earl of Derby, of the 11th of October, 1651, with a petition therein enclosed, entitled, “The Humble Petition of the Earl of Derby,” was this day read. [Note 8: Oliver Edge, to whom Lord Derby surrendered, resided at Birch Hall Houses, in Rusholme. To his credit it should be said that, whilst strictly faithful to his oath, he treated his illustrious captive with the respect due to fallen greatness when conducting him and his friends as prisoners to Chester. In one of his letters to his Countess, the Earl speaks of Captain Edge as “one that was so civil to me that I, and all that love me, are beholden to him.”] [Note 9: If so, this must have been in 1640, when the Earl, who was at that time Chamberlain, gave the appointment (27 July, 14 Car. I.) to Orlando Bridgeman, son of the Bishop of Chester, in succession to Roger Downes, of Wardley Hall, near Manchester.] [Note 10: vii.—27.]