Battle of Sedgemoor

Background

Charles II died on 6 February 1685 without a legitimate heir, and his Catholic brother came to the throne as James II. Charles's eldest illegitimate son, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, was a Protestant and popular, and in 1681 there had been attempts to exclude James from the succession by parliamentary means and put Monmouth in his place. They failed, and after a plot to overthrow both brothers Monmouth went into exile in Holland. There a small group of plotters, among them Lord Grey of Warke and the Earl of Argyll, planned a double rising: Argyll in Scotland, Monmouth in the West Country.

Monmouth landed at Lyme Regis on 11 June with three small ships, four light field guns and 1,500 muskets, and a small following: about 80 men by one count, no more than about 300 by another. Recruits came in by the thousand. Many were nonconformists, persecuted under Charles II; most were labourers and artisans. He was proclaimed king at Taunton and marched for Bristol, but Feversham reached the city first. Turned back at Keynsham on 26 June, the rebels had the better of a fight at Norton St Philip on the 27th but did not follow it up. At Frome on the 28th news came that Argyll had been captured, and men began to desert.

The army fell back to Bridgwater on 3 July. On the 5th the royal army arrived and camped three miles south-east at Westonzoyland, with the Wiltshire Militia at Middlezoy and Othery. A local man named Godfrey, who had scouted the royal camp, offered to guide the rebels across the moor, and Monmouth decided on a night attack.

The armies

Feversham's army was small but professional. Foard counts about 700 horse, from the Life Guards, the Earl of Oxford's regiment and the Royal Dragoons, and about 1,900 foot in six battalions: two of the 1st Foot Guards, one of the Coldstream, Dumbarton's (later the Royal Scots), and Kirke's and Trelawney's, recently back from Tangier. Most of the musketeers had flintlocks; only Dumbarton's still carried matchlocks. Pikemen still guarded the foot against horse. The artillery train, 26 guns by Foard's count, was parked as one battery facing the Bridgwater road, away from the infantry camp. The horse were quartered in the village, saddled and ready. Churchill, made major-general for the campaign, commanded the foot.

Monmouth had about 3,600 men. Grey led roughly 600 horse, mounted on farm horses unused to gunfire. Nathaniel Wade, lieutenant-colonel of the Duke's own regiment, led the foot: about 3,000 men in five regiments, each with a company of scythemen, James II's account says, in place of grenadiers. They were poorly trained and short of muskets. There were four small iron guns under a Dutch gunner, and three reached the field. Their best hope was surprise: to strike before the royal horse and guns could come into action and fight hand to hand, where numbers would count.

The battle

The night march (10-11 p.m. to about 2 a.m.). The rebels left Bridgwater between ten and eleven o'clock, with the field word 'Soho'. They marched in silence up the Bristol road, then turned off by Bradney Lane and Marsh Lane onto the moor and skirted Chedzoy to the north, a five-mile march. A squeaking gun had to be left behind, and the ammunition wagon was left near Peasey Farm. They avoided the royal patrols, and a thick fog covered the moor. Colonel Oglethorpe, sent towards Bridgwater with a party of horse, passed behind them without learning they had gone.

The alarm (about 2 a.m.). At the Langmoor Rhyne, a water-filled drain, the guide could not at first find the crossing by the Langmoor Stone, and time was lost. Near the crossing a royal patrol found the rebels, a shot was fired, and a rider galloped to the camp shouting 'Beat your drums, the enemy is come'. Sir Francis Compton's guard of 100 horse and 50 dragoons skirmished with the rebel vanguard, and Compton was shot in the chest. The royal foot formed along the Bussex Rhyne in good time; the horse in the village took longer.

Grey's charge fails. The camp was now less than 1,200 m away. Grey went ahead with the main body of horse to cross the Bussex Rhyne by the Upper Plungeon, a cattle ford, and ride round to the guns. In the dark he missed it and rode along the north bank across the front of the royal foot, which fired; his horses bolted. A second body under Captain Jones found the plungeon but met some 150 of Compton's horse there.

The firefight (about 2.30-4 a.m.). The rebel foot came up fast and in confusion and formed opposite the royal right, held by Dumbarton's, whose lit matches showed in the dark. Wade halted thirty or forty paces from the ditch, intending to cross it, but the next regiment opened fire at long range, his own men followed, and they would not advance again. For about an hour and a half the two lines exchanged fire across the rhyne. The rebel musketeers mostly fired high, but their three guns, firing case shot from about 100 yards back on their left, hurt Dumbarton's and the 1st Guards. Churchill marched Kirke's and Trelawney's from the left to strengthen the right. Then, after some confusion, guns were brought up from the train: three on the right and three in the centre, by Foard's account. Bishop Mews of Winchester's own horses are said to have drawn them. A canister-shot scatter found north of the Chedzoy New Cut suggests the royal guns were later pushed north towards the rebel line.

Dawn and the rout (about 4-6 a.m.). The royal horse crossed both plungeons onto the rebel flanks. Oglethorpe drove the remaining rebel horse into the mire. Monmouth, told the royal horse were surrounding his foot, left the field with Grey. At daylight Feversham sent cavalry against both flanks and ordered the foot over the ditch. The rebel regiments beat off the first charges, but men began to run from the rear, and Captain Littleton's troop took the rebel guns. The slaughter was worst in a deep, boggy ditch and the cornfields of Chedzoy beyond it; the militia arrived in time to join the pursuit. Wade got a few hundred men back to Bridgwater. By five or six o'clock the battle was over.

Aftermath

The royal army lost perhaps 50-80 killed and some 200 wounded. Rebel losses were far heavier: Foard estimates more than 1,000 killed, and the parish recorded burying 1,384 bodies. About 500 prisoners, many of them wounded, were locked in Westonzoyland church. Some died overnight, and Foard records 22 executed the next morning. Others were shot where they hid or hanged on roadside gibbets. Monmouth and Grey were caught near Ringwood on 8 or 9 July. Grey eventually bought his freedom; Monmouth was beheaded on Tower Hill on 15 July, and the executioner took several blows. Feversham received the Garter.

The rebels who survived faced the Bloody Assizes under Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, which opened at Winchester on 25 August. More than 1,400 prisoners were tried. Fewer than 300 were executed, 144 of them after the Taunton assize, and some 800-850 were transported to the West Indies. The Battlefields Trust argues that the harshness of the sentences caused national revulsion and contributed, if only in a small way, to James II's overthrow in 1688.

Sedgemoor is often called the last pitched battle on English soil, though Preston (1715) and Clifton Moor (1745) are rival claimants. Foard argues the night attack was not a hopeless gamble but a sound plan undone by bad luck. It is now a registered battlefield, and among the most accurately located in England.

Wargaming it

Sedgemoor is small and short and the ground is well mapped: Foard calls it probably the most securely located of all English battles. Play it at battalion level, a unit per regiment or squadron, in turns of about 15 minutes; the whole action from the alarm to the rout fits in about a dozen.

The Bussex Rhyne is the whole game. It should be crossable by foot anywhere at a cost, but by horse only at the two plungeons. Put the royal camp in line behind it, the guns parked well away on the left, and the horse arriving piecemeal from the village. Fog and darkness should hide units until they are close and make finding the plungeon a matter of luck; a rule for blind moves, or hidden placement with an umpire, captures this best.

The rebel player's decisions are about tempo: push Grey's horse on without the guide, or wait; cross the ditch at once with cold steel, or stand and shoot. The rules should make rebel units reluctant to advance once firing starts. The royal player must bring up guns and horse, choose when to cross, and keep his men from shooting each other in the dark.

The obvious 'what if' is the one Foard raises: Grey finds the Upper Plungeon and gets among the guns and tents before the foot forms. A second is an earlier alarm, giving a straight dawn battle in the open.

Maps and pictures