But we were to learn more of Monmouth at Taunton and to have again impressed upon us how easy it is in Britain for one to hasten through places of the deepest historic interest quite unaware of their tragic story. We had passed through Taunton before, seeing little but a staid old country town with a church tower of unmatched gracefulness and dignified proportions; but Taunton's tragic part in the parliamentary wars and her fatal connection with "King Monmouth" never occurred to us, if, indeed, we knew of it at all. Taunton was strongly for the Parliament, but it was a storm center and was taken and retaken until the iron hand of Fairfax crushed the Royalists before its walls. Its record stood against it when the King "came into his own again." Its walls were leveled to the ground, its charter taken away and many of its citizens thrown into prison. Discontent and hatred of the Stuarts were so rampant that any movement against their rule was welcomed by the Taunton Whigs, though it is hard to see any consistency in the unreasoning support they gave to the Duke of Monmouth--the son of Charles II. and one of his many mistresses--in his pretensions to the throne occupied by James II. Monmouth entered Taunton amidst the wildest acclamations, and it was from the market square of the rebellious town that he issued his proclamation assuming the title of King. He was followed by an ill-organized and poorly equipped army of seven thousand men, who were defeated by four thousand Royal Troops. Then followed a reign of terror in Taunton. The commander of the King's forces hanged, without pretense of trial, many of his prisoners, using the sign of the old White Hart Inn as a gallows. Then came the Bloody Assizes, held by Jeffreys of infamous memory, in the great hall of the castle. After trials no more than travesties of brutal jests and savage cruelty, more than three hundred Somersetshire men were sentenced, according to the terrible customs of the time, to be "hanged, drawn and quartered," and a thousand were doomed to transportation. Here the active history of Taunton may be said to have ended. But Taunton has little to remind us of these dark and bloody times as we glide through her fine old streets and draw up in front of the London Hotel, where the host himself in evening dress welcomes us at the door. Every attention is given us and The London certainly deserves its official appointment by the Royal Automobile Club as well as the double distinction accorded it by the infallible Baedeker. It is one of the charming old-fashioned inns, such as perhaps inspired the poet Shenstone with the sentiment expressed in his well-known quatrain: "Whoe'er has traveled life's dull round, Whate'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think that he has found His warmest welcome at an inn."