Sacred Vow and Covenant went into limbo. Efforts by the Parliament to suppress the use of the Book of Common Prayer met with little more success.
   The countryside near Ash was again in arms two years later, with Cavalier families like the Harts of Lullingstone, the Giffords of Eynsford and the Millers of Wrotham leading a motley force that included mutinous troops from the Parliamentary armies. Lullingstone Castle was fortified and thereby came as near as it ever has been to justifying its name; that was not very near, as the Castle was abandoned on the approach of the enemy. Some of the Cavalier force joined with other mutinous troops in a march on Rochester, but were defeated en route by trained bands from East Kent. They managed first to sack the houses of Weldon and some other members of his Committee.
   There ensued in the county a period of uneasy peace, 

which ended in 1647 after the Committee of Kent had ill-advisedly attempted to enforce a widely disregarded ordinance of the Parliament that proscribed religious festivals. This new provocation led to a serious riot in Canterbury, where the citizens refused to be deprived of Christmas Day, and although their revolt was suppressed, there blossomed from it the rebellion of 1648 for ‘God, King Charles and Kent’. With the fleet in the Downs mutinying and declaring for the King and the Cavaliers and the moderates for a time sinking their differences, this formidable rising might well have succeeded. By its ultimate failure, it can only have helped to seal the King’s fate.
   At one time during the Kentish rebellion, war came very near to Ash. When, late in May, Fairfax advanced into the county, ostensibly marching on Rochester, he turned south at Northfleet¹⁰  and made