The unquestioned leader of the royalists was the head of the great house of Stanley, James Stanley, Lord Strange, afterwards 7th Earl of Derby. Though not actually succeeding to the title until September, 1642, his father William the 6th Earl had resigned all his estates in his son's favour five years before, and Strange had been since then the leader of the county. Born on January 31, 1606-7, he was educated in Bolton and at Oxford, and entered public life very early, becoming member of Parliament for Liverpool in 1625. Two years later he was summoned to the House of Lords as Baron Strange under the impression that this title was held by his father; that however not being the case the summons amounted to the creation of a new peerage. In June, 1626, Strange married, and lived for a time at court; but he soon retired to his estates in the north of England, living chiefly at Lathom House, and finding ample scope for his activities in local affairs in Lancashire, Cheshire and the Isle of Man. Strange was not a man fitted by temperament or inclination to shine at a court like that of Charles I., and though his loyalty was conspicuous and undoubted, he had evidently made himself very unpopular with the royal advisers who hindered rather than helped him during the Civil War. "Court friendship," he writes, "is a cable that in storms is ever cut," and probably the words had a personal significance. But however objectionable he may have been to the Court, Strange was marked by his position for leadership when the King needed help from Lancashire. In February, 1638-9, he was summoned by Charles at the outbreak of the first Scotch war, and in 1640 he joined the King at York. When the Civil War began he was Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire and Cheshire, and was continued in those positions by the King, though of course removed by Parliament.