page_title: Siege of Lathom House
section_title: First siege
hierarchical_section_title: Siege of Lathom House / First siege
caption_attribution_description: Cromwell's Stone, situated in the grounds of Lathom Park Chapel, in Lathom, Lancashire, England.
context_page_description: The Siege of Lathom House was a military confrontation between a Parliamentarian army and a Royalist stronghold in Lathom near Ormskirk in Lancashire, during the First English Civil War. The first siege lasted from late February to late May 1644, when the siege was lifted. The second siege took place a year later from July to December 1645. Lathom House was captured and slighted.
context_section_description: When Fairfax arrived at Lathom House in February 1644, the Countess had made every effort to conceal the strength of the castle's fortifications. Fairfax demanded that the Countess surrender Lathom House to him. She asked for a week to consider his offer, and then insisted that it was only appropriate that he visit her at Lathom House for further negotiations. He was received as an honoured guest, but the entire household categorically rejected his terms for surrendering. He gave her two more days to consider her situation. The emissary sent two days later was scornfully dismissed.
  The siege began with 2,000 Parliamentary soldiers (500 cavalry and 1,500 infantry) against a garrison of 300. The fortifications of Lathom House consisted of:
  Outer walls and embankments six feet thick
  An eight-yard moat
  Nine towers, each with six cannons, three pointing in either direction, and the Eagle Tower providing an excellent overview of the battlefield
  In addition, the castle was at the lowest point in the middle of an open expanse that allowed superb views of the enemy's activities. Charlotte had assembled a militia of seasoned marksmen who were able to inflict significant losses by sniping.
  John Seacome, an 18th-century historian of the House of Stanley quoted from another account A true and genuine account of the famous and ever memorable siege of Lathom-House in the County of Lancaster:
  Latham-house stands upon a flat, upon a moorish, springy, and spumous ground ; was encompassed by a strong wall of two yards thick; upon the wall were nine towers, flanking each other, and in every tower were six pieces of ordnance, that played three the one way, and three the other. Without the wall was a mote, eight yards wide, and two yards deep; upon the back of the mote, between the wall and the graff, was a strong row of palisadoes around; besides all these there was a high strong tower, called the Eagle Tower, in the midst of the house, surmounting all the rest; and the gate-house was also two high and strong buildings, with a strong tower on each side of it; and in the entrance to the first court upon the tops of these towers, were placed the best and choicest marksmen, who usually attended the Earl in his hunting and other sports, as huntsmen, keepers, fowlers, and the like; who continually kept watch with scrued [screwed] guns and long fowling pieces upon those towers, to the great annoyance and loss of the enemy, especially of their commanders, who were frequently killed in their trenches, or as they came or went to or from them.... Nature herself [seemed to have] formed [the house] for a strong hold or place of security.... The uncommon situation of it may be compared to the palm of a man's hand, flat in the middle, and covered with rising round around it, and so near to it, that the enemy in a two year's siege, were never able to raise a battery against it so as to make a breach in the wall practicable to enter the house by way of storm.
  The fortifications sustained continuous cannon and mortar fire with minimal damage. The Royalists launched several successful sorties to disrupt Parliamentary efforts to set up batteries. As a result, Parliamentary forces were unable to establish any major artillery positions against the castle, and the army refused to replenish those guns that were lost or spiked during the sorties. Morale among the Roundheads also suffered greatly as the besieged shot soldiers and engineers on the battlefield.
  Nevertheless, Fairfax persisted in demanding that Charlotte surrender to his forces, going so far as to obtain a letter from Lord Stanley asking for safe passage for her. She refused to surrender under any terms, rebuking messengers in increasingly disdainful tones.
  After one particularly audacious sortie in late April that destroyed several Roundhead positions, Fairfax declared a day of fasting and prayer in his camp. One of the chaplains invoked the following verse from Jeremiah 50:14:
  Put yourselves in array against Babylon on every side: all ye that bend the bow, shoot at her, spare no arrows: for she hath 
caption: Cromwell's Stone. The hollows in the stone are said to have been used for casting shot by Cromwell's army in the siege of Lathom House.
exif: {"Image Make": "FUJIFILM", "Image Model": "FinePix F11", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Digital Camera FinePix F11     Ver1.01", "Image DateTime": "2007:11:07 16:08:09", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "294", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1360", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7942", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/120", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Landscape Mode", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:11:07 16:08:09", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:11:07 16:08:09", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "69/10", "EXIF ApertureValue": "3", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "309/100", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "8", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2848", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2136", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1212", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "3703", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "3703", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Landscape", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}