The accession of James II., and the consequent rebellion of Monmouth in the interest, nominally, of Protestantism, led to the first serious increase of the standing army; but again it is curious to note that Monmouth’s own manifesto at Lyme Regis, where he landed, brings prominently forward the proposal to have no standing army at all, but only the militia. This is proof positive, if such were needed, that a permanent military force, such as it then was, was still unpopular in England. There was no fighting worth mentioning in James’s reign save at Sedgmoor, and there the only noteworthy points are the failure of the night attack, through faulty and imperfect reconnaissance; and the fact that Sergeant Weems of the 1st Royals received a gratuity of £40 for serving the “great guns in an emergency.” The true use of artillery was not understood, evidently, and the guns were attached to infantry regiments (as they were later, and singly, to cavalry squadrons), and James organised an “ordnance regiment” armed with fusils, for the protection of his artillery, which finally became the Royal Fusiliers. The only point of interest in the dreary slaughter of the vanquished after the battle of Sedgmoor, in which the Somersetshire clown, ill-armed and wounded, showed the greatest gallantry, is the stern repression exercised by Colonel Kirke of the 2nd Queen’s, whose regimental badge of the Paschal Lamb acquired an ominous significance when applied to the cruelties inflicted by his men after the rebels were defeated. “Kirke’s Lambs,” they were named, in derision, from their regimental badge. Sedgmoor was the last serious battle fought on English soil. But the army had largely increased none the less. The troops at Tangiers had been recalled. The king dreamed of using the army as a means of overawing the country, and formed at Hounslow the first camp of exercise for field manœuvres. But this effort to gain the army’s support was made in vain. The 12th Regiment grounded its arms _en masse_ rather than agree to support the repeal of the Test Penal Law; the cheering of the soldiery at the acquittal of the Seven Bishops was an unpleasant reminder that they were not with him in sympathy; and the effort to introduce Irish Catholics in numbers into the purely Protestant regiments met with the strongest opposition. “No man of English blood,” says Macaulay, “then regarded the aboriginal Irish as his countrymen; the very language spoken by the Irish was different from their own.” No wonder, therefore, that there was friction, such as found its full expression in the resignation of their commissions by the colonel and five captains of the 8th Foot--resignations which were not accepted, the offenders being tried by court martial and cashiered. It is curious to note that Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, thought the sentence inadequate.