bridgwater—admiral blake—the monmouth rebellion
the ancient town of bridgwater can now produce few evidences of its antiquity. the siege of 1645, various conflagrations, and the very considerable modern prosperity of the place have all been contributory causes toward this—to the tourist—somewhat desolating result. the town straddles on either side of the parret, the hither side named appropriately and inevitably “eastover.” it is the less considerable and important portion, the chief buildings of the place being on the left bank of the river. a dull, undistinguished, heavy georgian appearance characterised the town until quite recently, but a great deal of building activity has of late been manifested here, with results perhaps as yet a little too recent for criticism. at any rate, the old outstanding features remain; the large parish church, with curiously squat tower and elongated spire, forming with the corn exchange and town hall, the one striking group that alone stands in pictures recognisably for bridgwater.
a great deal of argument has been expended 127upon the name of bridgwater. the name is apparently of the most obvious and elementary derivation, for here is the “water” (largely impregnated, it is true, with mud) in the river parret, and here is the bridge, the modern representative of others of different degrees of antiquity, erected at the lowest place down the estuary where it was possible to fling a bridge across. it is evident, then, that it must ever have been impossible to enter or leave the town in an easterly or westerly direction without crossing a bridge or ferry at this point. other place-names in the district, those of highbridge and boroughbridge, for example, prove the word “bridge” to have been used in the ordinary way, when necessary, as an integral, and indeed scarcely avoidable, part of a name. yet the derivation of “bridgwater” has nothing to do, explicitly, with water, although “brugge,” i.e. bridge, the name of the place at the time of the conquest, certainly implies water beneath. the manor was given, after the conquest, to one of the conqueror’s norman barons, walter of douai, and became therefrom known as “brugie of walter” and by degrees, by a natural elision of letters readily dropped in ordinary speech, what it is now.
birthplace of admiral blake
of the castle of bridgwater, once a strong fortress, both by virtue of its own stout walls, and by reason of the fine position it held at the crossing of the parret, nothing is left, except portions of the water gate, on the west quay, 128and the cellars of what is now the custom house. the last occasion of its appearance in history was the shameful surrender of it to a besieging army under fairfax, on july 23rd, 1645, after a two days’ assault. it had been so generally considered impregnable that the wealthy royalists of the countryside, afraid for the safety of their jewellery and other valuables, had sent them hither from what they thought to be the insecurity of their own houses. thus the taking of the impregnable castle and the surrender of the invincible 129garrison resulted in exceptionally heavy spoils, amounting to ￡100,000 value.
bridgwater boasts one famous son; robert blake, the great admiral, or rather, general-at-sea, of the commonwealth, who taught foreign nations in general, and the dutch in particular, who wanted the lesson badly, the respect due to england. his birthplace is still standing in this his native town, in a quiet byway, where tall, staid eighteenth-century merchants’ residences look down, as it were with a certain condescension, upon the less imposing house in which the hero was first introduced to a troubled world, in 1599. it is a comfortable, rather than a stately, house; but it was built to last. it is the oldest house now remaining in the town, and was probably built in the early years of the sixteenth century, the interior disclosing a greater antiquity than would be suspected from the frontage. huge, roughly squared oak timbers frame the walls and cross the ceilings with immense rafters. they had been all carefully covered up some generations ago, and their existence hidden by plaster and wall-papering; but recent repairs of the house have resulted in all this honest construction being again disclosed; and very noble, in the rugged old way, it looks. during the progress of these repairs and alterations, the plaster on the walls of an upper room was found to have been liberally scratched and otherwise drawn upon at a period contemporary with admiral blake. sketches of ships were prominent among 130these rough sgraffiti: ships built and rigged in a manner characteristic of the seventeenth century, and the words “rex carolus” appeared among them. it was necessary, for the repair of the walls, to cover up most of these sketches, but the best have been carefully preserved.
robert blake’s father was a merchant, with more children (a round dozen of them) than business. his mother came of an old landed family; the williamses of planesfield. robert himself was sent to oxford and was in residence there, chiefly at wadham college, fifteen years, wishful of becoming a fellow, but finally balked of that ambition for an easeful life. it is curious to contemplate that old possibility of this stout man of war having ever become a cloistral butt of futile learning, of the peculiar brand of futility affected by oxford.
his father died, leaving but an insignificant sum to be divided among his many children, and robert, with strong republican views, was returned to parliament for his native town of bridgwater. events were moving rapidly towards civil war, and in the outbreak of that momentous struggle many men found at last their vocation. among them was blake, whose great defence of taunton town against the royalist siege in 1645 was one of the most dogged and successful incidents of that time. encompassed by ten thousand men and his ammunition all shot away, food exhausted, and a breach actually made in the walls and the enemy swarming through it; still 131he would not yield, and declared he would eat his boots first. fortunately the rumour of fairfax’s relieving army at that moment spread among the besiegers, and the siege was raised, else blake would have had a full and an unappetising meal before him, as any one who contemplates his statue here, and the great thigh-boots he is wearing, may judge for himself.
at the establishment of the commonwealth, blake was given high command at sea: a military man afloat as admiral; a thing in our own highly specialised times unthinkable. his complete success in that new environment is a part of our history that need not be recounted here. after many inconclusive duels with the dutch, who, under van tromp, disputed the sovereignty of the seas, and after brilliant services abroad, blake died while yet in what may be termed the prime of life, of an intermittent fever, and probably also from an exhaustion induced by old wounds, on board his flagship, off plymouth, in 1657. with his death disappeared one of the few entirely honest republicans of that time: a man that england could then ill spare, as the nation was to find but ten years later, when the dutch fully revenged themselves for former reverses by their historic raid up the medway and destruction of english ships off chatham.
after many years, bridgwater has at last honoured itself and the memory of this great man with a statue, placed prominently in front of the corn exchange. he is represented in the military 132costume of the time, with a short, wind-blown cloak flying from his shoulders, pointing into space. it is a pose admirably chosen, and every line of this fine bronze figure expresses the courage, zeal, and bull-dog determination characteristic of the man. bronze panels in relief on the plinth represent blake’s fleet off portland, february 1653; the capture of santa cruz, april 20th, 1657; and blake’s body brought into plymouth sound, august 7th, 1657. this appropriate couplet from spenser is added:
sleepe after toyle, port after stormy seas,
ease after war, death after life, doth greatly please.
bridgwater church has its place in history, for it was from the battlements of this tower that the ill-fated monmouth looked forth upon the plain of sedgemoor, just before the battle that was to decide his fortunes.
nothing in the long story of the west so stirs the blood as the incidents of the disastrous expedition captained by this handsome, ambitious, and well-liked son of charles ii. it was a generous enterprise—if at the same time not without its great personal reward, if successful—to attempt the saving of england from the domination of popery that again threatened her; and it deserved a better conclusion than that recorded by history.
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 133the 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 134may 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 135very 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.
james ii.’s troops challenged the masses of men they saw dimly advancing through the mist, and were for a time deceived by the answering cry of “albemarle,” the name of the royalist commander, who was supposed to be coming to the support of lord feversham.
and thus the monmouth men passed on to the bussex rhine, where they were simultaneously challenged and fired upon by another outpost. dismayed by this volley at close quarters, the 136rebel horse, forming the advance, broke and dashed wildly back into the stolid ranks of the peasantry. it says much for the stubborn courage of those ploughmen and hedgers and ditchers who formed the bulk of the duke’s ranks, that in this confusion they stood fast.
then the fight began in earnest, chiefly hand-to-hand, beside the broad and stagnant rhine, in whose noisome mud many a stout fellow met his death that night. it was not until day dawned across the moor that the last band of rustic pikemen broke and fled before the king’s battalions, pouring across the bussex rhine.
hours before, under cover of the night, the rebel duke had fled the spot with lord grey and thirty horsemen. it had been a better thing had he halted and been cut to pieces with his brave followers. his had then been a nobler figure in history.
he had looked with the ill-disguised contempt of an old campaigner upon his doomed rustics. urged to make a last effort to support them, he said bitterly: “all the world cannot stop those fellows; they will run presently”—and ran himself. the shattered remnants of his raw ranks poured confusedly into bridgwater town, soon after daylight was come. at first the townsfolk thought them but the wounded stragglers from a great victory, and shouted, with caps flying in air, for “king monmouth.” then the dreadful truth spread abroad from the lips of wounded and dying men, and those who had 137cheered for the flying leader hid themselves, or fled on their own account. three thousand of the rebels lay slain upon the field.
swift and terrible was the punishment meted out to the unhappy victims of monmouth’s ill-starred rising. the moorland, the towns and villages throughout the counties of somerset and dorset, were made ghastly with the bodies and quarters of the rebels executed and hanged in gimmaces, or fixed on posts by the entrances to the village churches; and the shocking judicial progress of the infamous judge jeffreys, is aptly commemorated in the popular name of the “bloody assize.” the duke of monmouth, captured at woodyates, was beheaded on tower hill, after an abject appeal for mercy had been refused, on july 15th.
lost causes always appeal to the imagination more eloquently than those that have gained their objects, and the monmouth rebellion is no exception. the enthusiasm aroused by the handsome presence and gallant bearing of this gay and careless son of charles ii. and lucy walters, still finds an echo in the west, in the sympathy felt for his tragic end and for the temporary eclipse of the protestant cause. this interest lends itself to the whole of the level country behind bridgwater, the flat, dyke-intersected, alluvial plain of sedgemoor. the bussex rhine, one of the original dykes, has long since been filled up, and more modern ditches cut for the better draining of the district; but the spot 138where the battle was fought can still be exactly identified. it lies half a mile to the north of westonzoyland, whose rugged church tower overlooks the greater part of the moor, topping the withies, the poplars, and the apple-orchards of the village with grand effect. in that stately church five hundred of the rebels were imprisoned before trial. a little distance from the site of the bussex rhine is the langmoor rhine, and, near by, brentsfield bridge, where the duke’s men crossed. the village people of chedzoy still show the enquiring stranger that stone in the church wall on which the pikes were sharpened before the fight, and the plough even now occasionally turns up rusty sword-hilts, bullets, and other eloquent memorials of that futile struggle. but the silken banner, worked by the fair maids of taunton, where is it, with its proud motto, pro religione et libertate? and where the memorial that should mark this fatal field whereon so many stalwart west-countrymen laid down their lives for their faith?