The side of the war from which it appears as a class struggle is also illustrated in Lancashire. The head of the local royalists was James Stanley, seventh Earl of Derby, representing the great house of Stanley which had been for generations all-powerful in the north-west of England; the leaders on the other side were the lesser gentry who stood to gain by the weakening of his power, and behind them was the awakening spirit of the towns. The first event of the war in September, 1642, was Derby's unsuccessful siege of Manchester; the hardest fought engagement was the royalist capture of Bolton in 1644; the last scene, seven years later, was Derby's own execution in Bolton market place. These things are significant of the place which the towns were beginning to take. And with the Earl of Derby in 1651 died the last of feudalism in Lancashire.
The geographical conditions had another effect in that as the two parties were divided the Parliament held in this respect the advantage. Their territory was the south and south-east of the county which was the most accessible part of it. Thus the royalists were cut off from the neighbouring counties, and once at least, in August, 1644, when Newcastle had overrun all Yorkshire and sent from Halifax a summons to Manchester, the moorland barrier saved the Lancashire Parliamentarians from having an invasion to face. Blackstone Edge was fortified and the difficulty of the ground was enough to secure the safety of the county.
Yet although the war in Lancashire was mostly fought out locally, the result had a considerable effect on the war in the north of England generally. This has been too much neglected in the general text books. The north-west of England was in 1642 mainly Royalist; so was the neighbouring district of North Wales; and in 1642 Lancashire was mainly royalist too. The King's party thought themselves and their opponents thought them the stronger side. Yet in less than twelve months after Edgehill the Royalist party in Lancashire was completely defeated; and though Prince Rupert's hurricane descent on the county on his way to York in 1644 changed things for a little while, it was only a temporary change, and had no permanent result on the war in Lancashire. This meant much, for it was in the summer of 1643, when the Lancashire Parliamentarians were carrying all before them in their county, that the King's cause generally was at its height; and not only in the south of England but even in Yorkshire and Cheshire. In the spring of 1643 Sir Wm. Brereton was holding his own in Cheshire with difficulty; after Newcastle's victory over the Fairfaxes at Adwalton Moor in July all Yorkshire except Hull was royalist territory. If the royalists had kept Lancashire in 1642 as they expected, or had regained it afterwards as they were always hoping to do, the King would have been supreme in the north of England, and the war might have been considerably prolonged.