On this day … 20 June 1642

On 20 June 1642, Lord Strange, soon to become the seventh Earl of Derby, summoned Lancashire supporters of the king to a meeting on Fulwood Moor that signalled the outbreak of Civil War hostilities in the county. His call was answered by some five thousand persons who shouted their loyalty to the king.

Two representatives of the Parliamentarians, one of the Preston MPs and Alexander Rigby (pictured below) of Middleton Hall, Goosnargh, had tried unsuccessfully to prevent the gathering. Rigby was to become one of the leaders of the Parliamentary forces during the Civil War.

The Royalists followed up the Fulwood Moor gathering by garrisoning Preston and seizing control of its magazine of armaments.

However, support for the king was somewhat lukewarm in Preston, consisting chiefly of followers of the Earl of Derby, the Stanley family being a powerful force in the town then and later, and of Catholics. Set against this support was the Parliamentary sympathies of the town’s corporation. The struggle for control of the town between the Stanleys and the corporation was to persist for centuries.

The key figure among the Preston Royalists was Adam Morte, a member of the corporation, who was due to serve as mayor. He declined the office, and devoted himself to the Royalist cause. The corporation fined him 100 marks for his refusal.

Two more meetings were held in Preston later in the year, again called by the Earl of Derby, to raise money for the king. Adam Morte was given the job of collecting funds in Amounderness, and he became one of the leaders of the Royalist garrison of 300 men in Preston. The town became the Royalist headquarters north of the Ribble.

Early in the next year, a force of Parliamentarians was sent from Manchester to capture Preston, which they did with little cost to themselves but with several deaths among the defenders, including Adam Morte. The victorious Presbyterians ‘sang praises to God in the street’.

They did not hold the town for long. Five weeks later Derby was back and retook the town, but his success was short-lived. He was defeated in a battle at Whalley, and within a year of his marshalling Royalist forces on Fulwood Moor, Lathom House, the Stanley residence, and Greenhalgh Castle at Garstang, were the only two places holding out for the Royalists in Lancashire.

The following year, the Royalists had regrouped and where once more back in Preston, under the command of Prince Rupert. The town offered him a banquet, which he refused, declaring, ‘Banquets are not fit for soldiers’, and he carted off the mayor and the town’s bailiffs to Skipton, were he imprisoned them.

The mayor and bailiffs were freed twelve weeks later following the Parliamentarians resounding victory at the battle of Marston Moor. The corporation awarded them each £20 to compensate them for their sufferings. Shortly after, what later became known as the first Civil War ended with the flight of the king to Scotland.

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Source
Clemesha’s History of Preston