The spot was in one respect well, in another ill chosen for a descent. Nowhere, indeed, was James's tyranny more detested than in that quarter of England in which William now found himself, but nowhere also was it more feared. It was the country of the men who had risen for Monmouth and fought at Sedgemoor, but it was the country too of the men who had trembled before Jeffreys, and whose blood had given its name to his terrible Assize. The reception which William met with was in fact determined by a balance of these considerations. He was welcomed with abundance of popular sympathy, but with little overt popular support. The gentry and peasantry rejoiced at the sight of his standard, but were slow in gathering to it. His march to Exeter was something like a triumph, but it seemed at first, and indeed for some days after he had fixed his quarters there, that he was to get nothing from the people but their good wishes. That this delay in supporting him gave much disappointment and even some anxiety to William is certain. He was too politic to make any public manifestation of feelings, the disclosure of which might only have served to aggravate their cause; but in private he complained indignantly of the slackness of his promised adherents, and even talked--though here we may permit ourselves to doubt his seriousness--of abandoning his enterprise and returning to Holland. At the end of a week, however, important partisans of his cause began to make their appearance. Lord Colchester, a friend of Monmouth's, was the first to join him; Edward Russell, a son of the Earl of Bedford, followed; Lord Abingdon, a recruit from the other side of politics, was the next to give his adhesion to William; and almost at the same moment the cause of James sustained the most significant repudiation it had yet undergone in the desertion of Lord Cornbury, the eldest son of Lord Clarendon, who, after an unsuccessful attempt to bring over with him the three regiments of which he was the commander, deserted them with a few followers and made his way to William's quarters.