This painting, of the failed summer 1685 Duke of Monmouth 'Pitchfork Rebellion', is entitled The Morning of Sedgemoor and was painted by Edgar Bundy in 1905. It shows a group of Somerset farmers, to invert a Biblical figure of speech, "forging their ploughshares into swords", preparing to face King James II's army at the Battle of Sedgemoor - often referred to as England's Last Battle - on 6 July 1685.
The leader of the 500 'scythemen' at Sedgmoor was William Thompson, who was described as "an officer and linnen draper of London". Two of the customised scythes that were found after the battle are in the collection of the Royal Armouries.
Monmouth had already begun plans to expand his rebellion into Ireland, at Carrickfergus and also other garrisons in the south, but the disastrous defeat at Sedgemoor ended the rebellion. King James II reigned on, and his brutal "Bloody Assizes" reprisals began. 1400 arrests, about 350 public executions.
Little wonder that when William Prince of Orange arrived at Brixham on 5 November 1688, the Devon population flocked to him - William's diarist recorded that the people said 'If this should fail, we are all undone' They told me about the invasion of Monmouth, when many people were hanged in Plymouth and elsewhere'. They had lived through it before, and saw hundreds of their friends and neighbours chopped up in public.
The following spring, the men that Henry Hunter would gather around east Down and Killyleagh for his "insurrection" against King James II's army would have been much the same as these Sedgmoor men - armed mostly with modified farm implements. Courageous to the end.
PS: Numerically, the opposing forces at the Battle of Sedgemoor, and the Break of Killyleagh, were the same. At each, King James II's army numbered 3000 soldiers. Against them, at Sedgemoor, a civilian militia of 4000 had been assembled. At Killyleagh, the highest reported estimate was 3000-4000 civilians.
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