The accompanying view is taken from a hill above the valley or trench, where, it is said, the main army of the besiegers was encamped.  It is called in the neighbourhood “Cromwell’s Trench,” and the engraving may serve to convey some idea of that magnificent and princely dwelling, which, as the old ballad expresses it, would hold “two kinges, their traines and all.”  Henry the Seventh, two years after his visit to Lathom, restored his palace at Richmond, the same authority tells us, “like Lathom Hall in fashion.”  The gate-house in the engraving is drawn from the description of a carving of the Stanley legend in Manchester Collegiate Church, executed in the time of James Stanley, Bishop of Ely.  From this it appears to have had two octagonal turrets on each side of an obtusely-pointed or circular archway with battlements, machicolated and pierced for cannon.

The Eagle Tower alone remained when part of the estate was transferred to John Lord Ashburnham, on his marriage, in 1714, with Henrietta, daughter of William, ninth earl of Derby.  Lord Ashburnham sold it to a Furness, and he to Sir Thomas Bootle.  Not a vestige now exists, and even the records of the family are destroyed.  “Golforden,” says Mr Heywood, in his interesting Notes to a Journal of the Siege of Lathom, “along whose banks knights and ladies have a thousand times made resort, hearkening to stories as varied as those of Boccaccio;—­the maudlin well, where the pilgrim and the lazar devoutly cooled their parched lips;—­the mewing-house,—­the training round,—­every appendage to antique baronial state,—­all now are changed, and a modern mansion and a new possessor fill the place.”

This memorable siege, and the heroic defence by Lady Derby, though among the most prominent topics in the history of the county, supply but few materials which may not be found in records that already exist.  Yet there are incidents connected with them which the historian has left unrecorded; occurrences, it might be, too trivial or too apocryphal for his pen.  One of the main events in the following narrative, though not found amongst written and authenticated records, the author has listened to when a child, with a vigorous and greedy appetite for wonder,—­one of the earliest and most delightful exercises of the imagination.

We purpose to follow briefly the order of events as they appear in the several narratives to which we have had access, interweaving such traditionary matter as we have gathered in our researches, thereby interrupting and relieving the tediousness of this “thrice-told tale.”