In a farmer’s field in northwestern England, a decade-old energy company hopes to overcome its decidedly rocky history of shale drilling in the United Kingdom. Seven years after earthquakes followed its first attempt at hydraulic fracturing, that company, Cuadrilla Resources, has returned with a government-enforced go-slow approach. It has set up a chain of seismic monitors three miles beyond its dig to gauge tremors. Contractors from Schlumberger, the oilfield services firm, plan to pace themselves and spend up to three months stimulating the wells using the process known as fracking. In the United States, a similar effort would take just a few days. Francis Egan, the chief executive of Cuadrilla, will be monitoring closely when the first gush of water, sand and chemicals cracks the shale bed called the Bowland basin. So will wary homeowners and environmentalists who have battled Cuadrilla in court. They were in court on Thursday in the latest effort to delay the project.