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. [Illustration: 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 the 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 may 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. [Illustration: WESTONZOYLAND.]