Sedgemoor

Sedgemoor, a marshy district in the middle of Somersetshire, 5 miles SE. of Bridgwater, was the scene of the fight between 4000 soldiers of King James II. and 8000 of the undisciplined followers of the Duke of Monmouth, on 6th July 1685; the latter were defeated, with the loss of a thousand slain on the battlefield and several hundreds more in the subsequent pursuit and in the executions that followed. The account of the fight in Macaulay's History should be read, and also the description in Blackmore's Lorna Doone.