A Royal Visit

On the 19th of February 1643, Lancaster surrendered to Parliamentarian forces without a shot being fired. This easy capitulation of a traditional royal seat of power infuriated Royalist commanders, and provoked the Earl of Derby into marching his army north and storming the town on the 18th of March. However, the Parliamentary garrison remained safe within the walls of the castle, which the Earl's forces spent two days attacking to no avail. Frustrated by their inability to take the castle, the earl's forces withdrew, though not before burning a large area of the town. They left behind them approximately two hundred dead civilians, and castle walls pockmarked with holes made by their musket-balls during the fierce fighting, like the ones above.

Lancaster remained a Parliamentarian stronghold until the end of the war, controlling the west coast route to and from Scotland. The Earl of Derby was eventually executed in 1651 for a massacre committed by his troops in Bolton.