GLASTONBURY TRIBUNAL.
SEDGEMOOR BATTLEFIELD.
Proceeding westward towards the Bristol Channel, the low and marshy plain of Sedgemoor is reached. Much of it is reclaimed from the sea, and here and there the surface is broken by isolated knolls, there being some two hundred square miles of this region, with the range of Polden Hills extending through it and rising in some places three hundred feet high. In earlier times this was an exact reproduction of the Cambridgeshire fenland, and then, we are told,
"The flood of the Severn Sea flowed over half the plain,
And a hundred capes, with huts and trees, above the flood remain;
'Tis water here and water there, and the lordly Parrett's way
Hath never a trace on its pathless face, as in the former day."
It is changed now, being thoroughly drained, but in the days of the Saxons the river Parrett was the frontier of Wessex, and one of its districts sheltered Alfred from the first onset of the Danish invasion when he retreated to the fastnesses of the Isle of Athelney. In the epoch of the Normans and in the Civil War there was fighting all along the Parrett. After the defeat at Naseby the Royalists, under Lord Goring, on July 10, 1645, met their foes on the bank of the Parrett, near Langport, were defeated and put to flight, losing fourteen thousand prisoners, and the king's troops never made a stand afterwards. Bridgwater is a quiet town of about twelve thousand people on the Parrett, a half dozen miles from the sea, and in its churchyard reposes Oldmixon, who was made collector of customs here as a reward for his abusive writings, in the course of which he virulently attacked Pope. The poet retorted by giving Oldmixon a prominent place in the Dunciad, where at a diving-match in the putrid waters of Fleet Ditch, which "rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to the Thames," the heroes are bidden to "prove who best can dash through thick and thin, and who the most in love of dirt excel." And thus the Bridgwater collector:
"In naked majesty Oldmixon stands,
And Milo-like surveys his arms and hands,
Then sighing thus, 'And am I now threescore?
And why ye gods should two and two make four?'
He said, and climbed a stranded lighter's height.
Shot to the black abyss, and plunged downright."
In the Market Inn at Bridgwater Admiral Blake was born, who never held a naval command until past the age of fifty, and then triumphed over the Dutch and the Spaniards, disputing Van Tromp's right to hoist a broom at his masthead, and burned the Spanish fleet in the harbor of Santa Cruz. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, but Charles II. ejected his bones. Bridgwater is now chiefly noted for its bath bricks, made of a mixture of clay and sand deposited near there by the tidal currents.
SEDGEMOOR, FROM COCK HILL.