And then, one Sunday morning of late winter, we heard from the pulpit of Drayton Parish Church how the King was dead, when was read to the congregation there assembled the speech to his Council of the new King, James, in which he did fairly promise to uphold the laws, and in especial to respect the rights of the Church of which he was the head, though no member. And my father was cheered, and Emmet was sombrely downcast, and the country people murmured of King Monmouth under the breath. Later came the news of the late King's apostasy in the very article of death. If these things were true of Charles, whom in some sort they had contrived to love, what should be looked for, said Emmet and those of his kidney, from him who, as Duke of York, was but lately the most hated and hateful of all in the three kingdoms? And then came the rumors of the late King's doing to death by his brother now on the throne. The truth, grave as it was, would not content our more turbulent and hot-headed spirits of the west, but they must even mix falsehood, none being too scandalous, to overseason a dish already too heavy for stomachs unused to high fare. And so there followed an indigestion--I mean the mad and wicked insurrection of the Duke of Monmouth. To this day I cannot think, and much less write, of the summer and autumn that followed the death of King Charles II. without some return upon my spirits of the horror and gloom that the doings of those days engendered. So I will pass over our share in these things as quickly as may be. When we heard of the Duke's landing at Lyme Regis, in the county of Dorset, and not more than twenty good miles from our little village of Drayton, it was already late on the eleventh day of June; yet that very night did my father set himself to the task of getting at once under arms his small company of the yellow-coated Somerset train-bands. Receiving the next morning instructions from Sir William Portman, the colonel of that force and a near friend of his own, he was enabled to despatch them out of hand on their road to join with the red-coated militia of Dorset at Bridport, saying that thus the poor hinds might at least die cleanly, if die they must; while staying at home they had, like enough, taken the rebel infection and ended on a gallows. His old wound and other infirmities, to my great joy, kept him with me at Drayton. But, not content with what was already done, he made during the week that followed a visitation of the neighborhood, exhorting all and sundry to loyalty, and with so good result that our Drayton folk suffered less in the cruel days so near at hand than any other village for forty miles round.