In 1642 Strange was 35 years of age. He was in many ways not unworthy of the great traditions of the famous House which he represented. There is no need to subscribe to all the panegyrics which royalist writers have showered upon the 'martyr earl'; and no doubt his personal worth, unhappy history, and tragic death are some excuse for them. Personally he was honourable, high minded and brave; even his enemies speak of him as a "worthy gentleman, courteous and friendly" and suggest that his actions were rather due to evil counsels than to his own disposition. Indeed it is remarkable that of contemporary judgments, Clarendon's is the most unfavourable. He was personally religious, as his Book of Private Devotions shows, and he was a patron of literature and art. But there seems to have been in his character some underlying flaw of weakness and irresolution which paralysed all his actions. He broke with the Court, yet he made himself no party in Lancashire; and finding himself in 1642 in command of great resources, he had not the strength to concentrate his efforts, and lost control in the county while sending to the main royalist armies troops over which he had no command. His leadership was marked by no foresight or capacity; he left Lancashire just at a time when his presence was most needed there; and on his return obeyed, though with reluctance, the Queen's orders to go to the Isle of Man, when it was far more necessary that he should remain in England. During his absence the famous first siege of Lathom House was sustained by the Countess of Derby. Refusing all overtures after the end of the first war, he retired to the Isle of Man, which became a refuge for the more irreconcilable royalists. Pursued to the last by ill-fortune and bad judgment Derby emerged from his retirement to join Charles II.'s expedition in 1651; he escaped wounded from his own defeat at Wigan to join in the general rout at Worcester; and finally, having surrendered on promise of quarter to a Captain who could not keep the promise, he was the only Lancashire royalist to suffer death on the scaffold. But if unswerving loyalty and sincerity in a lost cause constitute a claim to martyrdom, the leader of the Lancashire royalists is abundantly entitled to the honour.[29]