the Committee." Later in the month Mackworth went to London, where he was due to make depositions against Laud before a House of Lords committee in January 1644. These particularly related to Laud's interference with the town's charter, in a dispute between the town and William Beale, Master of St. John's College, Cambridge, and in the appointment of the head of Shrewsbury School. Meanwhile, the situation in Shropshire became desperate as numerous experienced royalist soldiers, redeployed during a lull in the Irish Confederate Wars, entered the country via Chester. Robert Corbet and Andrew Lloyd, committee members who remained at Wem, wrote to Mackworth, asking him to "represent our forlorne condition to the Parliament, for whom we have desperately engaged our estates and lives." Mytton counter-attacked against the royalists: on 12 January he captured a large royalist ammunition convoy at Ellesmere, Shropshire, along with its commanders. On 18 February Prince Rupert arrived in Shrewsbury, shook up the garrison and then launched a brutal campaign, defeating a force under Mytton at Market Drayton He left on 14 March to relieve Newark. On 27 March Mackworth wrote to Denbigh from Coventry, bemoaning the "bleedinge condition" of Shropshire: unless relief came soon, he averred, he would have to recommend withdrawal to Nantwich or Stafford.