The Somerset Coast

by Charles G. Harper

BRIDGWATER: ST. MARY’S CHURCH, AND CORN EXCHANGE.

It was three weeks after the landing of Monmouth at Lyme Regis, on the coast of Dorset, that he arrived at Bridgwater. Three thousand men had flocked to him on his landing, and by the time he had reached Taunton, the enthusiasm was such that his forces were more than doubled, and numbered seven thousand. But his was an undisciplined and untrained mob, rather than an army, and a fiery religious fervour, ready to dare anything for Protestantism, was an ill equipment with which to contend against the trained troops of James the Second, hastening down to oppose their march. This was essentially a popular rebellion, for the influential gentry of the West, although ill-affected towards the reactionary rule of King James and willing enough to end his reign, hesitated to join, and by their cowardice lost the day. While they timorously waited on events, the peasantry showed a bolder front, and chiefly through their sturdy conduct, Monmouth’s advance through Dorset and Somerset had been by no means without incident in the warlike sort. His rustics, badly armed though they were, and largely with agricultural implements instead of weapons of offence, gave with their billhooks, their pikes, and scythes, an excellent account of themselves against the Royalist regulars commanded by Lord Feversham in the hotly contested skirmish at Norton St. Philip on June 26th.

It was, perhaps, in some measure the unaccustomed weapons used by Monmouth’s countrymen that alarmed Feversham’s soldiers and gained that day for the rebel Duke, for even men trained to arms lose much of their courage when confronted with strange, even though, it may be, inferior weapons. But it was still more the valour of the Somerset rustics that won the day on that occasion for Faith and Freedom.

Had Monmouth followed up his advantage, the wavering sympathies of the West of England gentry might have thrown fresh levies into the field for his cause; but he retired upon the then defenceless town of Bridgwater, and remained inactive.

WESTONZOYLAND.

Now, there is nothing that more disheartens untrained men than a check in their forward march. Countermarching to them appears but the forerunner of defeat, and the flow of ardour in any cause once hindered is difficult to recover. With regular troops the chances and changes incidental to campaigning inure them to disappointments, and the retreat of to-day they know often to be but the prelude of to-morrow’s advance. But with Monmouth’s men, their leader’s plan once altered, their fortunes seemed irretrievably clouded. Monmouth himself grew gloomy at the delay the vacillations of himself and his lieutenants had caused, and when on the afternoon of Sunday, July 5th, he ascended to this point to reconnoitre the position his opponents had taken up in the midst of the moor, his heart sank. He saw the glint of their arms, the colours of the regiments drawn up beneath the shadow of the tall tower of Westonzoyland, and he well knew that a conflict between them and his brave, but untaught, peasants could only prove fatal to his ambitions. He had, some years before, led those very soldiers to victory. “I know those men,” said he to his officers, leaning over these parapets of St. Mary’s; “they will fight!”

By a circuitous route, his army left the town of Bridgwater when night was come and darkness had shrouded the moor. By narrow and rugged lanes they went, past Chedzoy, towards the Polden Hills. Here they turned, and, led by a guide, essayed to thread the maze of deep ditches called, in the parlance of the West Country, “Rhines.”

It was not until two o’clock in the morning that they had reached within striking distance of the Royal troops, crossing safely the Black Ditch, and moving along the outer side of the Langmoor Rhine, in search of a passage, when a pistol was fired, either by accident or treachery. “A Dark night,” says one who was present, “and Thick Fogg covering the Moore.” The darkness and the sudden alarm caused by the pistol-shot threw Monmouth’s men into confusion, and the Royal forces were at the same time aroused. The night attack had failed.