Dorset was the stage on which were acted the first and one of the concluding scenes of the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion in 1685. On June 11th the inhabitants of Lyme Regis were sorely perplexed when they saw three foreign-looking ships, which bore no colours, at anchor in the bay; and their anxiety was not lessened when they saw the custom house officers, who had rowed out, as their habit was, to overhaul the cargo of any vessel arriving at the port, reach the vessels but return not again. Then from seven boats landed some eighty armed men, whose leader knelt down on the shore to offer up thanksgiving for his safe voyage, and to pray for God’s blessing on his enterprise. When it was known that this leader was the Duke of Monmouth the people welcomed him, his blue flag was set up in the market place, and Monmouth’s undignified Declaration—the composition of Ferguson—was read. That same evening the Mayor, who approved of none of these things, set off to rouse the West in the King’s favour, and from Honiton sent a letter giving information of the landing. On June 14th, the first blood was shed in a skirmish near Bridport (it was not a decisive engagement). Monmouth’s men, however, came back to Lyme, the infantry in good order, the cavalry helter-skelter; and little wonder, seeing that the horses, most of them taken from the plough, had never before heard the sound of firearms.
Then Monmouth and his men pass off our stage. It is not for the local Dorset historian to trace his marches up and down Somerset, or to describe the battle that was fought in the early hours of the morning of July 6th under the light of the full moon, amid the sheet of thick mist, which clung like a pall over the swampy surface of the level stretch of Sedgemoor. Once again Dorset received Monmouth, no longer at the head of an enthusiastic and brave, though a badly armed and undisciplined multitude, but a lonely, hungry, haggard, heartbroken fugitive. On the morning of July 8th he was found in a field near Horton, which still bears the name of Monmouth’s Close, hiding in a ditch. He was brought before Anthony Etricke of Holt, the Recorder of Poole, and by him sent under escort to London, there to meet his ghastly end on Tower Hill, and to be laid to rest in what Macaulay calls the saddest spot on earth, St. Peter’s in the Tower, the last resting-place of the unsuccessfully ambitious, of those guilty of treason, and also of some whose only fault it was that they were too near akin to a fallen dynasty, and so roused the fears and jealousy of the reigning monarch.
Everyone has heard of the Bloody Assize which followed, but the names and the number of those who perished were not accurately known till a manuscript of forty-seven pages, of folio size, was offered for sale among a mass of waste paper in an auction room at Dorchester, December, 1875.[2] It was bought by Mr. W. B. Barrett, and he found that it was a copy of the presentment of rebels at the Autumn Assizes of 1685, probably made for the use of some official of the Assize Court, as no doubt the list that Jeffreys had would have been written on parchment, and this was on paper. It gives the names of 2,611 persons presented at Dorchester, Exeter, and Taunton, as having been implicated in the rebellion, the parishes where they lived, and the nature of their callings. Of these, 312 were charged at Dorchester, and only about one-sixth escaped punishment. Seventy-four were executed, 175 were transported, nine were whipped or fined, and 54 were acquitted or were not captured. It is worth notice that the percentage of those punished at Exeter and Taunton was far less than at Dorchester. Out of 488 charged at Exeter, 455 escaped; and at Taunton, out of 1,811, 1,378 did not suffer. It is possible that the Devon and Somerset rebels, having heard of Jeffreys’ severity at Dorchester, found means of escape. No doubt many of the country folk who had not sympathized with the rebellion would yet help to conceal those who were suspected, when they knew (from what had happened at Dorchester) that if they were taken they would in all probability be condemned to death or slavery—for those “transported” were really handed over to Court favourites as slaves for work on their West Indian plantations. It is gratifying to know that it has been discovered, since Macaulay’s time, that such of the transported as were living when William and Mary came to the throne were pardoned and set at liberty on the application of Sir William Young.
Monmouth was the last invader to land in Dorset; but there was in the early part of the nineteenth century very great fear among the Dorset folk that a far more formidable enemy might choose some spot, probably Weymouth, on the Dorset coast for landing his army. Along the heights of the Dorset downs they built beacons of dry stubs and furze, with guards in attendance, ready to flash the news of Napoleon’s landing, should he land. The general excitement that prevailed, the false rumours that from time to time made the peaceable inhabitants, women and children, flee inland, and sent the men capable of bearing arms flocking seaward, are well described in Mr. Hardy’s Trumpet Major. But Napoleon never came, and the dread of invasion passed away for ever in 1805.
In the wild October night time, when the wind raved round the land,
And the back-sea met the front-sea, and our doors were blocked with sand,
And we heard the drub of Dead-man’s Bay, where bones of thousands are,
(But) knew not what that day had done for us at Trafalgar.[3]
The isolation of Dorset, which has been before spoken of, has had much to do with preserving from extinction the old dialect spoken in the days of the Wessex kings. Within its boundaries, especially in “outstep placen,” as the people call them, the old speech may be heard in comparative purity. Let it not be supposed that Dorset is an illiterate corruption of literary English. It is an older form of English; it possesses many words that elsewhere have become obsolete, and a grammar with rules as precise as those of any recognised language. No one not to the manner born can successfully imitate the speech of the rustics who, from father to son, through many generations have lived in the same village. A stranger may pick up a few Dorset words, only, in all probability, to use them incorrectly. For instance, he may hear the expression “thic tree” for “that tree,” and go away with the idea that “thic” is the Dorset equivalent of “that,” and so say “thic grass”—an expression which no true son of the Dorset soil would use; for, as the late William Barnes pointed out, things in Dorset are of two classes: (1) The personal class of formed things, as a man, a tree, a boot; (2) the impersonal class of unformed quantities of things, as a quantity of hair, or wood, or water. “He” is the personal pronoun for class (1); “it” for class (2). Similarly, “thëase” and “thic” are the demonstratives of class (1); “this” and “that” of class (2). A book is “he”; some water is “it.” We say in Dorset: “Thëase tree by this water,” “Thic cow in that grass.” Again, a curious distinction is made in the infinitive mood: when it is not followed by an object, it ends in “y”; when an object follows, the “y” is omitted:—“Can you mowy?” but “Can you mow this grass for me?” The common use of “do” and “did” as auxiliary verbs, and not only when emphasis is intended, is noteworthy (the “o” of the “do” being faintly heard). “How do you manage about threading your needles?” asked a lady of an old woman engaged in sewing, whose sight was very dim from cataract. The answer came: “Oh, he” (her husband) “dô dread ’em for me.” In Dorset we say not only “to-day” and “to-morrow,” but also “to-week,” “to-year.” “Tar’ble” is often used for “very,” in a good as well as a bad sense. There are many words bearing no resemblance to English in Dorset speech. What modern Englishman would recognise a “mole hill” in a “wont-heave,” or “cantankerous” in “thirtover”? But too much space would be occupied were this fascinating subject to be pursued further.
National schools, however, are corrupting Wessex speech, and the niceties of Wessex grammar are often neglected by the children. Probably the true Dorset will soon be a thing of the past. William Barnes’ poems and Thomas Hardy’s Wessex novels, especially the latter, will then become invaluable to the philologist. In some instances Mr. Barnes’ spelling seems hardly to represent the sound of words as they are uttered by Dorset, or, as they say here, “Darset” lips.