camp. Behind the men of Honiton
came the Puritan clothworkers of Wellington, with their mayor upon
a white horse beside their standard-bearer, and a band of twenty
instruments before him. Grim-visaged, thoughtful, sober men, they were
for the most part clad in grey suits and wearing broad-brimmed hats.
'For God and faith' was the motto of a streamer which floated from
amongst them. The clothworkers formed three strong companies, and the
whole regiment may have numbered close on six hundred men.

The third regiment was headed by five hundred foot from Taunton, men
of peaceful and industrious life, but deeply imbued with those great
principles of civil and religious liberty which were three years later
to carry all before them in England. As they passed the gates they were
greeted by a thunderous welcome from their townsmen upon the walls and
at the windows. Their steady, solid ranks, and broad, honest burgher
faces, seemed to me to smack of discipline and of work well done. Behind
them came the musters of Winterbourne, Ilminster, Chard, Yeovil, and
Collumpton, a hundred or more pikesmen to each, bringing the tally of
the regiment to a thousand men.

A squadron of horse trotted by, closely followed by the fourth regiment,
bearing in its van the standards of Beaminster, Crewkerne, Langport,
and Chidiock, all quiet Somersetshire villages, which had sent out their
manhood to strike a blow for the old cause. Puritan ministers, with
their steeple hats and Geneva gowns, once black, but now white with
dust, marched sturdily along beside their flocks. Then came a strong
company of wild half-armed shepherds from the great plains which extend
from the Blackdowns on the south to the Mendips on the north--very
different fellows, I promise you, from the Corydons and Strephons of
Master Waller or Master Dryden, who have depicted the shepherd as ever
shedding tears of love, and tootling upon a plaintive pipe. I fear that
Chloe or Phyllis would have met with rough wooing at the hands of these
Western savages. Behind them were musqueteers from Dorchester, pikemen
from Newton Poppleford, and a body of stout infantry from among the
serge workers of Ottery St. Mary. This fourth regiment numbered rather
better than eight hundred, but was inferior in arms and in discipline to
that which preceded it.

The fifth regiment was headed by a column of fen men from the dreary
marches which stretch round Athelney. These men, in their sad and sordid