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Gibbets were erected in all directions, and the fatal Bussex Tree was long known as the place where numbers were put to death without the form of a trial.
It was time; for Monmouth was already drawing up his army for action. He ordered Grey to lead the way with the cavalry, and followed himself at the head of the infantry. Grey pushed on till his progress was unexpectedly arrested by the Bussex Rhine. On the opposite side of the ditch the King's foot were hastily forming in order of battle.
During the whole of the struggle the foot upon the further bank of the Bussex Rhine were pouring in a hail of bullets, which our musqueteers, having to defend themselves against the horse, were unable to reply to. It needed no great amount of soldierly experience to see that the battle was lost, and that Monmouth's cause was doomed. It was broad daylight now, though the sun had not yet risen.
He agreed to the ordeal; the brutal Generals and no less brutal soldiers collected round the young man to prepare him for the race, close to the Bussex Rhine in Weston. Away they started at a furious rate till the horse fell exhausted by the side of his ill-fated companion, at Brinsfield Bridge, Chedzoy, a distance of three-quarters of a mile.
All were agreed that had it not been for the chance of the Bussex Rhine having been overlooked by our guides and scouts, we should have been among the tents before the men could have been called to arms. The ferocity of the Privy Council, after the rebellion was quelled, arose from their knowledge of how very close it had been to success.
There are some who say that the Bussex Rhine, as it is called, is not either deep or broad, and was, therefore, unmentioned by the moorsmen, but that the recent constant rains had swollen it to an extent never before known.
Along the borders of the Bussex Rhine a deep fringe of their musqueteers were exchanging murderous volleys, almost muzzle to muzzle, with the left wing of the same regiment with which we were engaged, which was supported by a second regiment in broad white facings, which I believe to have belonged to the Wiltshire Militia.
At midnight he started, marching his army by a circuitous route to the royal camp, strict silence being observed and not a drum beaten or a shot fired. Three ditches had to be crossed to reach the camp, two of which Monmouth knew of, but he was unfortunately ignorant of the third, called the Bussex Rhine, behind which the camp had been made.
Though they had not witnessed the cruelties practised by Colonel Kirk and his lambs, Simon had told him of what he had heard, and of the hundreds who had been hung up on the Bussex oak directly after the action. They were justly afraid that Mr Headland might be treated in the same cruel manner; and "if we had gone back we could have done no good," Stephen said to himself over and over again.
But, strange to say, the existence of a trench, called the Bussex Rhine, which immediately covered the royal encampment, had not been mentioned to him by any of his scouts. The wains which carried the ammunition remained at the entrance of the moor. The horse and foot, in a long narrow column, passed the Black Ditch by a causeway.
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