advance into Wiltshire. A report that a rising in his favour had taken
place at Axbridge decided him to return to Bridgwater. On the way he
again passed through Wells, where some of his men tore the lead from
the Cathedral roof to make bullets, and inflicted other damage on the
building. Soon after his arrival at Bridgwater, the royalist general,
Feversham, with about 4000 troops, reached Weston Zoyland from
Somerton, disposing some of his forces at the neighbouring villages of
Middlezoy and Chedzoy. As the royal troops were said to be in a state
of disorder, Monmouth, who had about 6000 men, very badly armed,
determined to attack him by night; and late on Sunday, July 5, he
started from Bridgwater under cover of darkness. But in the passage of
some of the "rhines" which cut up the Sedgemoor plain a mismanaged
pistol gave the alarm; and in the engagement that followed his
ill-equipped followers, though they fought bravely, had little chance
against the regulars, and more than 1000 of them fell on the field. The
battle had a sad sequel for Somerset. James knew no clemency; and
Jeffreys' bloody assize left a crimson trail across the country, which
even time found some difficulty in obliterating. Macaulay estimates
that the number of the rebels hanged by Jeffreys was 320, and though
the assize extended into Hampshire, Dorset, and Devon, most of its
victims were Somerset folk. A certain poetic justice may perhaps be
discerned in the fact that when, in 1688, the Prince of Orange drove
James from his throne, his march took him through Somerset, and he had
a skirmish with the royal troops at Wincanton. In connection with
Somerset's share in the events of James's reign, it deserves to be
mentioned that Bishop Ken, of Bath and Wells, was among the seven
prelates who presented the famous petition against the king's
Declaration of Indulgence.

The ecclesiastical history of Somerset may be briefly related. When