There was now some years' quiet in Lancashire, and the stricken county was able to recover slowly from its devastation and misery. The general course of affairs was briefly as follows. After Sir Thomas Fairfax had beaten Goring at Langport in July and Rupert had surrendered Bristol in September, the royalist resistance was practically at an end though Raglan Castle held out until August, 1646. The King surrendered to the Scots at Southwell in May, 1646, and was sent to Newcastle; and there then began the long series of negotiations in which Charles showed all the duplicity and untrustworthiness and lack of judgment which was the worst side of his nature. First the joint offer of the Scots and Parliament was refused because the King would not abandon episcopacy; when the Scots went home in January, 1646-7, he continued to play off the Independents against the Presbyterians. Circumstances favoured him to an extraordinary degree, but it was only a waste of time because he never really desired to come to any agreement, but continued to believe that he could regain his position by refusing all the terms which were offered. Then followed the open breach between Parliament and the army, the carrying off of the King from Holmby House, and the extremely moderate demands made by the Army in the Heads of the Proposals. These provided by far the best solution of the difficulty if only both sides could have accepted and kept them. In all this Lancashire had no part. The leaders were interested, particularly in Ecclesiastical affairs, but the people in general cared less about the negotiations than about the recovery of their own position. There can never be war, and especially civil war, without much misery; and though the Civil War in England was on the whole conducted with moderation, it inevitably brought in its train, want, loss of trade, and the dislocation of ordinary modes of life. The proportion of the population who actually fought in the war was very small, but in counties where fighting was carried on there can have been few if any of the inhabitants who were not indirectly affected by it. The graphic account of Adam Martindale of the disaster which it brought upon his family may be quoted.