Lord Derby further promulgated an announcement to similar effect, “inviting all his allies, friends, and acquaintance, all his tenantry in Lancashire, and Cheshire, and other places, as well as all his Majesty’s faithful and loyal subjects,” to repair to the Isle of Man, as a refuge and a rallying-place. No menaces or dangers, added the Earl in the proclamation, could trouble him, nor dangers deter him. A letter written by Lady Derby, the year of the King’s death, bitterly complains of the duplicity of Parliament dealings in respect of the disposal of their property. “As to the sects, their numbers daily increase, and their tenets are enough to make the hair stand on end.” She has been very ill for weeks past, and would be more than content to die and be at rest, but for the loved ones she would leave behind. Once more she descants upon the aberrations of the hydra-headed fanaticism which made such rampant strides in the last half of the seventeenth century, and once more, on the other hand, is amazed at the freedom which Roman Catholics are permitted. Only for the Church of England breathing space is not allowed; but her husband, she assures the Duchess de la Trémoille, who appears to entertain fears lest Lord Derby might waver, is more “Protestant” than ever. In the midst of all these real trials, she discusses with great interest a point of Court etiquette: the mighty question of the _tabouret_; and it is with as intense gratification that the Countess hears finally that the _tabouret_ has been accorded to her niece on her marriage, as it had once been given to herself. Another domestic incident of a disagreeable nature took place about this time, in the marriage of the heir of the Stanleys, Edward Lord Strange, with a Mademoiselle de Rupa, a German lady of neither position nor fortune. His parents never forgave this offence, and, to crown all, Lord Strange entertained some dreams of compounding with Parliament, fearing that hope for the Royalists was utterly gone, and that they would all be left at last to starve. Truly trouble was heavy on the friends of the murdered King’s son, who was now wandering in Scotland, after the execution of Montrose. Bradshaw’s hatred against the Earl of Derby was intense, and, with the ingenuity bred of spite and cruelty, he attacked him in the part most sensitive in such a man, through his children. For two years the two daughters, Catherine and Amelia, had been left in peace at Knowsley. “Now,” writes Lady Derby, 8th June 1650, “one Birch, governor of a little town called Liverpool, has taken them prisoners, and carried them there, where they are under guard.”