There was once a time when Bolton was a cleanly little town that manufactured woollen cloths, fustian, and dimities, under idyllic conditions. Those industries were in full progress when the quarrels of King and Parliament broke rudely in upon the scene, in 1644: the Parliamentary party having garrisoned the place, which, unfortunately for itself, was a walled town. On came Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby, from Wigan, with a force to take it by assault, but he was repulsed with heavy loss, and withdrew; the garrison being afterwards reinforced from Manchester, and its strength brought up to 3,000. Again the assault was pressed, and this time the Lord Strange was aided by Prince Rupert with 10,000 men. Two hundred devoted Cavaliers crept up under the walls, while treachery, it was said, admitted the cavalry. The storming of Bolton that ensued was one of the bloodiest affairs of the war, and few were spared from the fury of the Royalists. More than seven years later, the then Earl of Derby suffered for the excesses he, with Prince Rupert, permitted on this occasion; for, having been captured at the Battle of Worcester, he was brought to Bolton and beheaded on October 15th, 1651, at the Market Cross in Church Gate, opposite the “Old Man and Scythe” inn: with a grim fitness on the scene of the bloodshed himself had approved. An inscription on the front of the house narrates how “In this ancient hostelry James Stanley, seventh Earl of Derby, spent the last few hours of his life previous to his execution.” The house, built in 1636, was indeed a portion of his extensive Bolton property. Whatever the original sign of the house, the present is doubtless an allusion to the famous exploit of William Trafford of Swithamley, whose pretence of being an idiot saved his property from being plundered by the Puritan soldiery. They discovered him wielding a flail in his barn, and monotonously repeating “Now thus,” and so, unable to make him comprehend anything, they left. Beneath the threshing-floor where this supposed “natural” was gibbering lay his chief valuables. His trick is alluded to in the sign of the “Old Rock House” inn at Barton, near Manchester, where he is represented in a counter-charged suit, alternately red and white, and with his flail, inscribed “Now thus.” Here at Bolton, while the chequered red and white dress, somewhat resembling that of a jester, or fool, is retained, and while he wears a similar fool’s cap, his flail has in the course of years become a scythe.