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 where 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? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIV CANNINGTON—THE QUANTOCKS—NETHER STOWEY, AND THE COLERIDGE CIRCLE WE leave Bridgwater by St. Mary’s church and the street called curiously, “Penel Orlieu,” whose name derives from a combination of Pynel Street and Orlewe Street, two thoroughfares that have long been conjoined. “Pynel,” or “Penelle,” was the name of a bygone Bridgwater family.