As briefly as may be, we must give some account of the venture of Monmouth, which ended in such complete disaster.

Charles, natural son of Charles II. by Lucy Walters, born in 1649, created Duke of Monmouth in 1663 by his father, was, as Pepys writes, "a most pretty spark;" "very handsome, extremely well made, and had an air of greatness answerable to his birth," says the Countess D'Aulnay; was his father's favourite son, and for some time it was supposed that King Charles II. would proclaim his legitimacy and constitute him heir to the Throne. He was vastly popular with the nation, which looked up to him as the protector of the Protestant religion against the Duke of York, whose accession to the Throne was generally dreaded on account of his known attachment to the Roman Church. James therefore always regarded him with jealousy and suspicion—a jealousy and suspicion greatly heightened and intensified by a memorable progress he had made in 1680, in the West, when incredible numbers flocked to see him. He first visited Wiltshire, and honoured Squire Thynne, of Longleate House, with his company for some days. Thence he journeyed into Somersetshire, where he found the roads lined with enthusiastic peasants, who saluted him with loud acclamations as the champion of the Protestant religion. In some towns and villages the streets and highways were strewn with herbs and flowers. When the Duke came within a few miles of White Ladington, the seat of George Speke, Esq., near Ilminster, he was met by two thousand riders, whose numbers rapidly increased to twenty thousand. His personal beauty, the charm of his manners, won the hearts of every one, and thus the way was paved for the enthusiastic reception he was to receive later when he landed at Lyme, in Dorsetshire, as a defender of religion and a claimant for the Throne.

On June 14th, 1680, that landing took place. It had been arranged between him and the Duke of Argyle that each should head an expedition with the same end, and that a landing should be effected simultaneously, one in Scotland, under Argyle, the other in England, under Monmouth. Money and nearly everything else was wanting, and Monmouth was dilatory and diffident of success. But finally, two handfuls of men were got together, some arms were purchased, and some ships freighted. Argyle sailed first, and landed before the Duke of Monmouth, loth to tear himself from the arms of a beautiful mistress in Brussels, could summon resolution to sail. Argyle was speedily defeated and lodged in Edinburgh Castle on June 20th. Six days before his capture, Monmouth landed in Dorsetshire. He had with him about eighty officers and a hundred and fifty followers of various kinds, Scotch and English. Lord Stair, who had fled from the tyranny of James when Duke of York and Commissioner in Scotland, did not join the expedition; but Lord Grey did, an infamous man, who was one main cause of its miscarriage. The ablest head among the party was that of Fletcher of Saltoun, who in vain endeavoured to dissuade the Duke from an enterprise which he saw was premature and desperate, but from which he was too brave and generous to withdraw.

On landing at Lyme, Monmouth set up his standard, and issued a proclamation that he had come to secure the Protestant religion, and to extirpate Popery, and deliver the people of England from "the usurpation and tyranny of James, Duke of York." This was dispersed throughout the country, was passed from hand to hand, and with extraordinary rapidity was carried to the very Land's End, raising the excitement of the people, who chafed at the despotism of King James II., and were full of suspicion as to his purposes. In the Declaration, promises were made of free exercise of their religion to all kinds of Protestants of whatever sect; that the Parliament should be annually chosen; that sheriffs should also be annually elected; that the grievous Militia Act should be repealed; and that to the Corporations of the towns should be restored their ancient liberties and charters.

Allured by these promises, the yeomanry and peasantry flocked to Monmouth's standard, and had the Duke entrusted the volunteers to the direction of a man of talent and integrity, it is not impossible that he would have met with success.

But the infamous Lord Grey was made commander, and when, shortly after landing, the Earl of Feversham, a French favourite of King James, threw a detachment of regular troops into Bridport, some six miles from Lyme, and Monmouth detached three hundred men to storm the town, Lord Grey, who was entrusted with the command, deserted his men at the first brush, and galloping back into Lyme, carried the tidings of defeat, when actually the volunteers, with marvellous heroism, had accomplished their task, and had obtained a victory.

Monmouth inquired of Captain Matthews, what was to be done with Lord Grey.

Matthews answered as a soldier, "You are the only General in Europe who would ask such a question."

The Duke, however, dared not punish Lord Grey, and actually entrusted to him the command of the cavalry, the most important arm he had. Having thus given a position of trust to the worst man he could, he lost the ablest man in his party, Fletcher, who had quarrelled with a Somersetshire gentleman about his horse, which led to a duel, in which the Somersetshire man was shot, and Fletcher had to be dismissed.

On June 15th, four days after landing, the Duke marched from Lyme with a force that swelled to three thousand men. He passed through Axminster, and on the 16th was at Chard; thence he marched to Taunton, his numbers increasing as he advanced. At Taunton his reception was most flattering; he was welcomed as a deliverer sent from heaven; the poor rent the air with their joyful acclamations, the rich threw open their houses to him and his followers, his way was strewn with flowers, and twenty-six young girls of the best families in the town appeared before Monmouth, and presented him with a Bible. Monmouth kissed the sacred book, and swore to defend the truth it contained with his life's blood.

Here it was that he was met by the detachment from Tavistock and its neighbourhood. The men came in singly or in pairs, and somewhat later Mr. Crymes appeared in his coach. Anthony was immediately presented to the Duke, who, taken by his manly appearance, at once appointed him to be captain of the contingent from Tavistock.

On June 20th Monmouth claimed the title of King. It was a rash and fatal mistake, for it at once alarmed his followers, and deterred many from joining him. Many of those who followed him, or were secretly in his favour, still respected the hereditary rights of kingship; and others had a lingering affection for Republican institutions. These two opposite classes were dissatisfied by this assumption. Moreover, the partisans of the Prince of Orange, already pretty numerous, considered this claim as infringing the rights of James's eldest daughter, Mary, Princess of Orange, who, by birth and by religion, stood next in order of succession.

On June 22d Monmouth advanced to Bridgewater, where he was again proclaimed King; and here he divided his forces into six regiments, and formed two troops out of about a thousand horse that followed him.

We need not follow his extraordinary course after this, marked by timidity and irresolution.

Few of the gentlemen of the counties of the West joined him, and the influx of volunteers began to fail. Discouragement took possession of the Duke's spirits; and, when St. Swithin's rains set in before their proper time, not only was his ardour, but also that of his followers, considerably damped.

At length, on July 5th, it was resolved to attack the Royal army, encamped on Sedgmoor, near Bridgewater, where the negligent disposition made by Lord Feversham invited attack. Here the decisive battle was fought. The men following Monmouth's standard showed in the action an amount of native courage and adherence to the principles of duty which deserved better leaders. They threw the veteran forces into disorder, drove them from their ground, continued the fight till their ammunition failed them, and would at last have obtained a victory, had not the misconduct of Monmouth and the cowardice or treachery of Grey prevented it.

In the height of the action, when the fortune of the day was wavering, Lord Grey told Monmouth that all was lost—that it was more than time to think of shifting for himself. Accordingly, he and Monmouth, and a few other officers, rode off the field, leaving the poor enthusiasts, without order or instructions, to be massacred by a pitiless army. The battle lasted about three hours, and ended in a rout. The rebels lost about fifteen hundred men in the battle and pursuit; but the Royal forces had suffered severely.

Urith sat in the parlour at Willsworthy. She had reverted to the stolid, dark mood that had become habitual with her. Her hands were in her lap. She was plucking at the ring affixed to the broken token, through which passed the suspending ribbon. But for this movement of the fingers of the right hand she might have been taken to be a figure cut out of stone, so still was her face, so motionless her figure; not a change of colour, not a movement of muscle, not a flicker of the eyelid betrayed that she was alive and sentient; no tears filling the eye, no sigh escaping her lips.

The heat of her brow showed that she was labouring under an oppressive sorrow.

She spoke and acted mechanically when roused into action and to speech, and then instantly fell back into her customary torpor. Only when so roused did the stunned spirit flutter to her eyes, and bring a slight suffusion of colour into her face. Next moment she was stone as before.

She had been given, by Mrs. Penwarne, some flowers to arrange for the table.

"For his grave?" asked Urith, "and for my baby."

She took them eagerly, began to weave them, then they fell from her fingers into her lap, and she remained unconscious, holding the stalks.

The old lady came to her again, and scolded her.

"There! there! this is too bad. Take your token, and give me the flowers. I must do everything."

She put the broken medal again into Urith's hand; and left her, carrying the flowers away.

Urith was at once back again under her overwhelming cloud—the ever-present conviction that Anthony was dead, and that she had killed him.

She saw him at every moment of the day, except when roused from her dream, lying across the hearthstone with his heart pierced. She had seen a little start of blood from the wound, when it was dealt, and this she saw day and night welling up inexhaustibly in tiny wavelets, flowing over his side, and falling in a long trickle sometimes connected, sometimes a mere drip upon the hearthstone, and then running upon the pavement in a dark line.

This little rill never dried up, never became full; it pushed its way along slowly, always about the breadth of the little finger, and standing up like a surcharged vein, hemmed in by grains of dust and particles of flue. Urith was ever watching the progress of this rivulet of blood, as it stole forward, now turning a little to this side from some knot in the floor, then running into a crevice and staying its onward progress till it had filled the chink, and converted it into a puddle. She watched it rise to the edge of a slate slab, swell above it, tied back, as it were, by each jagged in the slate edge, then overleap it, and run further. The rill was ever advancing towards the main entrance to the hall, yet never reaching it, making its way steadily, yet making no actual progress.

On more than one occasion Urith stooped to remove a dead wasp that stood in the way of its advance, or to sop up with her kerchief some plash of water which would have diluted its richness.

Now, on the floor, lay a daisy head that had fallen from the flower bunch Mistress Penwarne had brought to her and then had taken away. Urith's eyes were on the daisy, and it seemed to her that the red rill was touching it. It was nothing to Urith that she was in the parlour, and that Anthony had fallen in the hall. Wherever she went, into whatsoever room, into the garden, out on the moor—it was ever the hall she was in, and the floor everywhere, whether of oak boards or of soft turf, or of granite spar, was in her eyes the pavement of the hall, and ever over that pavement travelled the little thread of blood, groping its way, like an earthworm, as endowed with a half consciousness that gave it direction without organs of sense.

And now on the floor lay the garden daisy-head, and towards it the purple-red streamlet was pushing on; was the daisy already touched, and the edges of the fringe of petals just tinctured? Or was its redness due to the reflection on the pure white of the advancing blood? The dye or glow was setting inward, whatever it was, and would soon stain the petals crimson, and then sop the golden heart and turn it black.

How long this process would require Urith did not ask, for time was nothing to her. But she looked and waited, she fancied that she saw the clotting together of the rays, and their gradual discoloration as the red liquid rose up through the yellow stamens.

And now the flower-head began to stir and slide over the floor, and the blood-streak to crawl after it.

Urith slowly rose to her feet, and, with bent head, observing the flower, step by step followed it. There was a draught blowing along the floor from a back-door that was open, and this stirred and carried forward the light blossom. Urith never inquired what moved the daisy; it was natural, it was reasonable, that it should recoil from the scent and touch of blood.

As the daisy-head slid forward—now with easy motion, now with a leap and a skip—so did, in Urith's diseased fancy, the rill of blood advance in pursuit, always just touching it, but never entirely enveloping it.

Urith stepped forward slowly towards the hall-door and opened it, to let the flower-head escape. Had she not done so, in a moment the daisy would have been caught, and have sopped up the blood like a sponge, lost all its whiteness, and become but a shapeless clot in the stream.

The draught, increased by the opening of the door, carried the little delicate blossom forward rapidly, into the hall and along its floor, and after it shot the head of the rivulet, pointed, like that of a snake darting on its prey. Then the daisy was arrested suddenly; it had struck against an obstruction—a man's foot.

Urith rose from her stooping position, and saw before her the man whose foot had stopped the daisy—it was Anthony, standing on the hearthstone. To her dazed sense it was nothing that the blood-stream should run in the course opposed to that it might have been supposed to run, from the parlour to the hall, from the door to the hearth. To her mind the ideal hall and the actual hall only coincided when they overlapped.

And now, standing on the actual hearthstone, with the fancied blood-stream running up to, and dancing about his foot, was Anthony.

"Urith!"

The voice was that of Anthony.

He had seen Luke, he knew in what condition he might expect to find her; and he had come to the house to see her, to let her light unsuspecting on him, in the hopes that the surprise might rouse her, and change the tenor of her thoughts.

He looked at her with love and pity in his heart, in his eyes, and with a choking in the throat.

Urith remained standing where she had risen from her bowed position, and for a long time kept her eyes steadily fixed on him; but there was neither surprise nor pleasure in them.

Presently she said slowly, with a wave of her hand, "No! I am not deceived. Anthony is dead. I killed him."

Then she averted her face, and at once fell into her usual trance-like condition.