was sent out to make a further foray, seize all the provisions they could collect, and compel persons to bring in whatever eatables they had. Report came to the place as to the hopelessness of resistance, and a female messenger was sent off to the King to learn his pleasure about the garrison continuing to resist. Complaints were made of the scarcity of bread, a scarcity arising not merely from the lack of flour but from the refusal of the bakers to bake, no less than sixteen flatly declining to do so. A cannonball hit the mayor's house. On 20 June the garrison of Worcester learned that Aston had surrendered on dishonourable terms. Although the besieging Parliamentarians had no artillery, the owner of the house the Parliamentarian Colonel William Lygon had offered to pay Aston £200, his cavalry troopers 30s. and the foot soldiers 10s., if they would leave Madresfield without their arms. Aston had accepted the terms, so Worcester was now the only Royalist stronghold left in the county. On 21 June, a Sunday, at about 13:00 the besiegers fired five cannons, but none were hurt. They fired four at about 17:00 and one more at 23:00. The last hit a poor house at the east end of the cathedral and splintered a bed. The occupants, a man his wife and 2 children who had slept in the bed the previous night had moved to other accommodation that day. On 22 June the besiegers fired a cannon at 6:00. The governor tried to strengthen the defences on the north side the city wall, near Pitchcroft. In the part next the butts, between Foregate Street and St Clements Church, poles, rafters, cross-pieces and hurdles were fixed and the spaces filled up with earth and horse dung. The poles were at least heigh and long. The intention was to obscure the view of the top of walls so that the besiegers could not sweep defenders of the wall from their works at St Johns. However Townshend remarks that works like this should have been done before the siege started in earnest and that the wall between Forgate and this new work should haver been lined with earth at least thick from top to bottom. But as the wall was only lined with at the base that being an old weak wall it would be broken down with every shot. To still