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 dwellings, had retained the same free and bold spirit which had made them in past days the last resource of the good King Alfred and the protectors of the Western shires from the inroads of the Danes, who were never able to force their way into their watery strongholds.

Two companies of them, towsy-headed and bare-legged, but loud in hymn and prayer, had come out from their fastnesses to help the Protestant cause.
At their heels came the woodmen and lumberers of Bishop's Lidiard, big, sturdy men in green jerkins, and the white-smocked villagers of Huish Champflower.