Ditch towards the royal army’s right flank. Theophilus Oglethorpe, up on Knowle Hill and preoccupied with the Bristol road, saw nothing of this. To make matters worse, after dark he had pulled in his standing patrol from the Langmoor Rhine, leaving a gap through which Monmouth slipped. He discovered what had happened some time later, when he took a patrol towards Bridgwater to satisfy himself that the rebels were still there. He just missed the tail end of Monmouth’s marching army, and only when he reached Bridgwater did he learn that the rebels had left the town.
At about the same time that Oglethorpe realised the scale of his failure, Monmouth was getting his men across the Langmoor Rhine, and confirming his plan with his senior commanders. Lord Grey was to take the cavalry over the northern plungeon (ford) over the Bussex Rhine, swing round into Westonzoyland and spread havoc through the royal camp. The infantry, marching onwards in column, would halt opposite the royalist foot, turn left into line, and attack a camp already rocked by the irruption of the rebel horse. It was not a bad plan, and even in the small hours of 6 July it might still have worked. However, as the rebels picked their way over the Langmoor Rhine in the misty half-light, a shot rang out.
We cannot be sure who fired it. Captain John Hucker of Monmouth’s horse maintained at his trial that he shot deliberately, to betray the attack, but his tale was as unconvincing then as it is now, and they hanged him anyway. It was probably one of Compton’s troopers, out creasing the moor, who fired his pistol in the air the minute he saw columns of rebel infantry on the move, and then rode towards Chedzoy to find Compton himself. Compton sent at least one trooper to camp to raise the alarm, and as he spurred towards Westonzoyland he collided with part of the rebel horse. Lord Grey had predictably missed the northern plungeon and had turned north of the Bussex Rhine rather than south of it, so was now separated from the royal camp by a belt of water which was effectively impassable to poorly trained cavalry in the dark.76 There was an inconclusive scuffle in which Compton was shot in the chest, but the damage was done.
Behind the Bussex Rhine the king’s infantry had turned out of their tents to form up on the open ground south of the ditch. Their drums were now beating. Some regiments had been issued with new flintlock fusil, but others had the older matchlock, and the glow of match-cord flickered out along the line as the corporals, whose job it was to keep a light handy, lit their men’s matches. The official account tells of ‘my Lord Churchill having command of the foot and seeing every man at his post doing his duty’, and the infantry’s swift response to the alarm speaks loudly for its training and discipline, and his precautions. All chance of surprise, and with it Monmouth’s battle, was now lost.
Most of Grey’s horsemen crossed Dumbarton’s front unengaged by yelling out that they were militia horse under Albemarle. But when challenged by 1st Foot Guards (commanded by Monmouth’s half-brother the Duke of Grafton), some replied with the rebel field-word ‘Monmouth and God with us,’ and both battalions of 1st Foot Guards in turn replied with a volley, as did the right-hand companies of the Coldstream. This was too much for Grey’s men, who broke back across the moor, some of them colliding with the two rearmost regiments of foot, the Blue and the White, which were forming up after crossing the Langmoor Rhine. The three remaining regiments, Red, Yellow and Green, managed to get into line ‘but not in good order’, just across the Bussex Rhine from the royal army’s right flank.
The rebel gunners had trundled three small field guns all the way from Bridgwater, and now swung them into action between the Yellow and Green regiments towards the left of Monmouth’s line. The rebels got to within ‘half musket shot’ of their enemies (Nathaniel Wade thought that the Red Regiment was within thirty or forty paces of the Bussex Rhine), stood their ground, and fired. Monmouth’s cannon, manned by Dutch professionals, made better practice than his infantry, most of whom, like many soldiers in battle for the first time, shot too high. Sending blasts of case-shot across the Bussex Rhine, the guns were soon doing serious damage to Dumbarton’s men and the right-hand battalion of 1st Foot Guards. Churchill, having satisfied himself that his line was properly drawn up, sent one troop of the Royal Dragoons across to the southern plungeon, and directed Lord Cornbury to take two more across to the right to support Dumbarton’s. He also ordered three light field guns to take station on the right of Dumbarton’s and pushed another three forward to join the first battalion of 1st Foot Guards. There is a pleasing story that Dr Peter Mews, Bishop of Winchester, a Dorset man who was accompanying the army, used his carriage horses to tug at least one of the guns into action. He had been a royalist captain during the Civil War and had fought in Holland after it, and was just the sort of prelate who saw no harm in praising God and passing the ammunition, but it is impossible to confirm the tale.
Cornbury’s dragoons, probably dismounted, were in action against the Green regiment on Monmouth’s left. They hit its colonel, Abraham Holmes, killing his horse beneath him and leaving him badly wounded on the ground. Churchill crossed the ditch nearby when the infantry eventually moved forward and asked Holmes, ‘Who art thou?’ Holmes replied glumly that he was not in a condition to tell. By this time some of the royal horse had mounted and ridden out of Westonzoyland to attack the right flank of Monmouth’s infantry. There is a possibility that they missed their way in the dark, swung back too close to the royal line and were duly shot at by their own infantry, but we cannot be sure.
When Feversham reached the field he divided his horse into two groups, and sent them out across the two plungeons to threaten the rebel flanks, probably ordering them not to charge until it was light enough for them to see what they were doing. Oglethorpe, on the right, spurred on anyhow, collided with a party of rebel horse and was then beaten off with loss when he charged one of the rebel foot regiments. While the horse were getting out onto the moor, Churchill shifted Trelawney’s and Kirke’s, who had nothing to shoot at, across to the right, although by the time they came up with Dumbarton’s the sun was beginning to rise and the battle was entering its last phase. With daylight reducing the risk of further ‘friendly fire’ incidents the royalist horse charged the retreating rebel infantry. The guns were swiftly overrun, and the rebel foot, struggling off as best it could, was soon swamped. Churchill quickly pushed the grenadier companies of his infantry across the Bussex Rhine to support the horse. The grenadiers of Dumbarton’s took Monmouth’s own banner, whose motto Fear nothing but GOD might have seemed ironic to the rebel survivors now running for their lives to escape the broadswords of the pursuing horsemen.
Oglethorpe was sent post-haste to London with news of the victory: his mistakes had not cost him Feversham’s favour. Churchill rode straight for Bridgwater, which opened its gates at once. The settling of accounts began early: on 7 July a Dutch gunner and a deserter who had fought for the rebels were hanged in front of the whole army. That hard man Percy Kirke, now appointed brigadier to command both his own regiment and Trelawney’s, was left behind to secure prisoners and ensure that the dead were properly buried. Sedgemoor had cost the royal army about thirty killed, and another 206, most of them from Dumbarton’s and 1st Foot Guards, were to receive pensions for wounds received. At least 1,400 rebels had been killed in the fighting and pursuit.
Monmouth was captured, dressed in shepherd’s clothes, on 8 July. He had already been condemned by Act of Attainder, but cravenly begged the king for his life: James observed that he ‘did not behave himself so well as I expected nor as one ought who had taken upon him to be king’.77 He had recovered his courage by the time he was taken to Tower Hill for execution the next day but, despite a substantial tip of six guineas, with the promise of another six from a servant after the job was done, Jack Ketch, the executioner, failed to kill him with his first three hacks. He then threw down his axe and declared that he could not go on, but the furious crowd urged him to put Monmouth out of his misery. Another two blows failed to sever the duke’s head, and the executioner eventually worried it off with his knife. Ketch had to be escorted from the scene to protect him from the mob.
The trials of captured rebels began at Winchester in late August, and thereafter the ‘Bloody Assizes’, supervised by George, Lord Jeffreys,
