y had left it. [374]

While the Parliament was devising sharp laws against Monmouth and his
partisans, he found at Taunton a reception which might well encourage
him to hope that his enterprise would have a prosperous issue. Taunton,
like most other towns in the south of England, was, in that age, more
important than at present. Those towns have not indeed declined. On the
contrary, they are, with very few exceptions, larger and richer, better
built and better peopled, than in the seventeenth century. But, though
they have positively advanced, they have relatively gone back. They have
been far outstripped in wealth and population by the great manufacturing
and commercial cities of the north, cities which, in the time of the
Stuarts, were but beginning to be known as seats of industry. When
Monmouth marched into Taunton it was an eminently prosperous place.
Its markets were plentifully supplied. It was a celebrated seat of
the woollen manufacture. The people boasted that they lived in a land
flowing with milk and honey. Nor was this language held only by partial
natives; for every stranger who climbed the graceful tower of St. Mary
Magdalene owned that he saw beneath him the most fertile of English
valleys. It was a country rich with orchards and green pastures, among
which were scattered, in gay abundance, manor houses, cottages, and
village spires. The townsmen had long leaned towards Presbyterian
divinity and Whig politics. In the great civil war Taunton had, through
all vicissitudes, adhered to the Parliament, had been twice closely
besieged by Goring, and had been twice defended with heroic valour by
Robert Blake, afterwards the renowned Admiral of the Commonwealth.
Whole streets had been burned down by the mortars and grenades of
the Cavaliers. Food had been so scarce that the resolute governor had
announced his intention of putting the garrison on rations of horse
flesh. But the spirit of the town had never been subdued either by fire
or by hunger. [375]

The Restoration had produced no effect on the temper of the Taunton men.
They had still continued to celebrate the anniversary of the happy day
on which the siege laid to their town by the royal army had been raised;
and their stubborn attachment to the old cause had excited so much fear
and resentment at Whitehall that, by a royal order, their moat had
been filled up, and their wall demolished to the foundation. [376] The
puritanical spirit had been kept up to