Synopsis

Tony Robinson hikes up from Lyme Regis on Dorset's Jurassic Coast to the Somerset Levels in the footsteps of a ragtag rebel army led by the dashing young Duke of Monmouth, the illegitimate son of Charles II. He sailed in from Holland round Lyme's famous Cobb with a handful of soldiers. He believed that the people would support him in overthrowing the newly crowned James II, who was also Monmouth's uncle, but, more importantly, Roman Catholic. The year was 1685 and the country was riven by anti-Catholic feeling mixed up with a strong dash of revolutionary zeal. Monmouth marched through the fiercely independent towns of Devon, gathering support from artisans and farmworkers. Meeting up with Billy Bragg in Colyton, Tony learns something about the kind of people prepared to risk their lives for this cause. The 3000-strong pitchfork army reached Taunton and there, in an act he would later come to regret, Monmouth was proclaimed the rightful King. This was indisputably an act of high treason and there would be no going back now. Monmouth had failed to get the support of the landed gentry. They may have preferred not to have a Catholic on the throne but taking up arms against your King was something else entirely. The rebel army pressed on, damp, dispirited and depleted, but only as far as Sedgemoor in the Somerset Levels. There, in the last pitched battle fought on English soil, they faced the King's army. Within a year, the Bloody Assizes had sent hundreds to the gallows and Monmouth was beheaded at the Tower. But the seeds of revolt had been sown and in 1688 the Glorious Revolution ended the absolute power of the monarch. Exec Prod: Philip Clarke; Prod/ Dir: Owen Rodd; Prod Co: Wildfire Television.

England's Last Battle - West Country

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