The body upon our left, who bore a banner amongst them announcing that they were men of Dorset, were fewer in number but better equipped, having a front rank, like our own, entirely armed with muskets.
The good townsmen of Taunton, with their wives and their daughters, had meanwhile been assembling on the balconies and at the windows which overlooked the square, whence they might have a view of the pageant.

The grave, square-bearded, broadclothed burghers, and their portly dames in velvet and three-piled taffeta, looked down from every post of vantage, while here and there a pretty, timid face peeping out from a Puritan coif made good the old claim, that Taunton excelled in beautiful women as well as in gallant men.

The side-walks were crowded with the commoner folk--old white-bearded wool-workers, stern-faced matrons, country lasses with their shawls over their heads, and swarms of children, who cried out with their treble voices for King Monmouth and the Protestant succession.
'By my faith!' said Sir Gervas, reining back his steed until he was abreast of me, 'our square-toed friends need not be in such post-haste to get to heaven when they have so many angels among them on earth.
Gad's wounds, are they not beautiful?
Never a patch or a diamond amongst them, and yet what would not our faded belles of the Mall or the Piazza give for their innocence and freshness ?' 'Nay, for Heaven's sake do not smile and bow at them,' said I.'These courtesies may pass in London, but they may be misunderstood among simple Somerset maidens and their hot-headed, hard-handed kinsfolk.' I had hardly spoken before the folding-doors of the town-hall were thrown open, and a procession of the city fathers emerged into the market-place.

Two trumpeters in parti-coloured jerkins preceded them, who blew a flourish upon their instruments as they advanced.

Behind came the aldermen and councilmen, grave and reverend elders, clad in their sweeping gowns of black silk, trimmed and tippeted with costly furs.
In rear of these walked a pursy little red-faced man, the town clerk, bearing a staff of office in his hand, while the line of dignitaries was closed by the tall and stately figure of Stephen Timewell, Mayor of Taunton.
There was much in this magistrate's appearance to attract attention, for all the characteristics of the Puritan party to which he belonged were embodied and exaggerated in his person.