consistency,
been condemned by some Whig writers who can see nothing criminal in
the conduct of the numerous Puritan ministers then in arms against the
government. Even when the guns had arrived, there was such a want of
gunners that a serjeant of Dumbarton's regiment was forced to take on
himself the management of several pieces. [413] The cannon, however,
though ill served, brought the engagement to a speedy close. The pikes
of the rebel battalions began to shake: the ranks broke; the King's
cavalry charged again, and bore down everything before them; the King's
infantry came pouring across the ditch. Even in that extremity the
Mendip miners stood bravely to their arms, and sold their lives dearly.
But the rout was in a few minutes complete. Three hundred of the
soldiers had been killed or wounded. Of the rebels more than a thousand
lay dead on the moor. [414]

So ended the last fight deserving the name of battle, that has been
fought on English ground. The impression left on the simple inhabitants
of the neighbourhood was deep and lasting. That impression, indeed, has
been frequently renewed. For even in our own time the plough and the
spade have not seldom turned up ghastly memorials of the slaughter,
skulls, and thigh bones, and strange weapons made out of implements of
husbandry. Old peasants related very recently that, in their childhood,
they were accustomed to play on the moor at the fight between King
James's men and King Monmouth's men, and that King Monmouth's men always
raised the cry of Soho. [415]

What seems most extraordinary in the battle of Sedgemoor is that the
event should have been for a moment doubtful, and that the rebels should
have resisted so long. That five or six thousand colliers and ploughmen
should contend during an hour with half that number of regular cavalry
and infantry would now be thought a miracle. Our wonder will, perhaps,
be diminished when we remember that, in the time of James the Second,
the discipline of the regular army was extremely lax, and that, on the
other hand, the peasantry were accustomed to serve in the militia.
The difference, therefore, between a regiment of the Foot Guards and a
regiment of clowns just enrolled, though doubtless considerable, was by
no means what it now is. Monmouth did not lead a mere mob to attack good
soldiers. For his followers were not altogether without a tincture of
soldiership; and Feversham's troops, when compared with English troops
o