great carelessness or undue haste. It is only three miles from Ellel to Cockerham, and the latter place is hardly on the direct route between Preston and Lancaster. The Parliamentarians therefore reached Lancaster only to find the enemy gone, and they had to content themselves with reinforcing the garrison and replenishing the stores in the Castle. Meanwhile Derby had marched straight on Preston, using great care to prevent his approach being known; and he had almost reached the town before news of his advance was brought. In Preston there had only been left four companies of foot and five hundred clubmen under Colonel Holland, and Colonel Duckenfield's troop of horse; but late at night as it was the Friars Gate was strongly guarded, and all preparations made for resistance. The townsmen, however, were strongly royalist in sympathy, and as the Earl approached the garrison gradually melted away, and led by Colonel Shuttleworth most of them made their escape as best they could. The royalist ostlers had locked the stable doors and secured the keys; so that many of the Parliamentarians being unable to get at their horses were taken prisoners. The royalists again garrisoned Preston, and plundered unmercifully any in the town who had been suspected of disaffection to their cause (March 20). Assheton hearing that the royalists had regained Preston, found his own position at Lancaster untenable, and leaving a garrison in the Castle marched into Blackburn Hundred, and by way of Chipping and Whalley into east Lancashire. A week later Seaton writes from Manchester in great despondency. He was without troops and his personal unpopularity was still so great that he hardly dared to show himself in the streets. The "Mercurius Aulicus" reported with rather less than its usual inaccuracy that "all Lancashire except Manchester is in royalist hands."[94] This was indeed the most spirited and successful operation conducted by the royalists. They derived no doubt some advantage from the disorganisation of the enemy's troops and their demoralisation owing to insufficient pay and clothing, as also from the carelessness which success had produced in the Parliamentarian officers; for their tactics show to much greater advantage than those of Assheton and Seaton, and for a time at least they regained much of the ground which they had lost. It is possible that there were other successes besides those which have just been described; one Parliamentarian writer even mentions a capture of Blackburn; and in any case a bold following up of the victories might possibly have led to a royalist reconquest of the county.[95] The royalist star was now in the ascendant in the north of England. Queen Henrietta Maria who had landed at Bridlington in February, had overrun the greater part of Yorkshire; some of her troops had advanced as far as Skipton, and were thus an additional menace on the north-east of Blackburn Hundred.