Axminster, for all its quietude and respectable insipidity, has had its stirring times. In the immediate neighbourhood was fought the battle of Brunenburgh, between a huge army of invading Danes and the Saxon forces of Athelstan. To quote the curious phrasing of an old chart of Henry VIII.’s time, “There entrid at Seton dywse strange nacions, who were slayne at Axmyster to the number of v Kings, viij erles, a busshoppe, and ix score thousand in the hole, as a boke old written doth testyfye.” To this day the level lands of the Axe valley and the lush meadows that border the river bear names that perpetuate those bloody onsets of upon a thousand years ago: Warlake, Kingsfield, Battleford recall the day of that great Saxon victory.

In the time of the great Civil War the country round about was harassed with the varying fortunes of Cavaliers and Roundheads, who, making sorties from their respective strongholds of Exeter and Lyme Regis, laid waste this unfortunate debatable ground. But it was during the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion, and after the failure of that desperate emprise, that a peculiarly lurid light is shed upon this town in common with all these counties of Dorset, Devon, and Somersetshire. There is a manuscript book of the time, still preserved in Axminster Independent Chapel, written by the minister, called “Ecclesiastica, or a Book of Remembrance,” which sets forth the doings of the period, and the persecutions to which the Dissenters were subjected. “Now” (the writer says) “the Lord stirred vp James, Duke of Monmouth (reputed son of the former king C. II.), who had bin in an exile state for some time, and on the 11th day of the 4th moneth of this year, 1685,2 he safely and peaceably landed at the hauen belonging to Lyme Regis with a small number of men, about eighty, hauing their ship laden with armour and ammunition, who, immediately vpon his landing, gaue forth his declarations to restore liberty to the people of God for the worship of God, to preserue the rights and priueledges of the nation, &c. Tydings of his landing were spread abroad far and near very speedily, and divers persons from severall quarters hasted to resort to him. Now were the hearts of the people of God gladded, and their hopes and expectations raised, that this man might be a deliuerer for the nation and the interest of Christ in it, who had bin euen harrous’d out with trouble and persecution, and euen broken with the weight of oppression vnder which they had long groaned.” So presently Monmouth’s army “jncreased to seuerall thousands,” and on the 15th of June they began their march from Lyme, “with much dread and terrour, to the amazement and wonder of many what the Lord had wrought. The first day of their march they came into the town of Axminster,” and there they lay some five days. Marching out towards Taunton, several skirmishes occurred, with loss on both sides, and “one Henry Noon, a pious and liuely Christian, a vsefull member related to this body, was also slain. And this church began to be diminished.” Then came the catastrophe of Sedgemoor, and a dreadful orgie of hangings and quarterings in this West of England. Axminster, however, witnessed only one execution, that of Mr. Rose, one of Monmouth’s gunners. As the rebellion was not merely a political movement, but also in some sort religious—a Protestant rising against Roman Catholicism—it followed that its failure was the beginning of bitter persecutions against Protestants—Churchmen and Dissenters alike. It must not be supposed, however, that Protestantism has a monopoly of martyrs. When that original form of dissent obtained the upper hand, there generally followed an equally bad time for members of the older Church, which then had the peculiar honour of furnishing victims for stake or gibbet. Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs” only shows us one side of religious persecution; the other side, were it equally well compiled, would be as lurid, as merciless: religious bigots seem to have been sadly deficient in humour.

Axminster has given an undying name to a particular make of carpet that is no longer manufactured here, but at Wilton, in Wiltshire. The Axminster factory was finally closed in 1835, having been in work for eighty years.