The Duke of Monmouth had managed to escape, disguised as a peasant. However, two days later, he was discovered in a ditch some 100 miles away, just west of Ringwood, Hampshire.

The Breezer - the joyride for a curious mind: A weekly newsletter from Steve Winduss at the Batting the Breeze podcast. Spend a few minutes with me discovering historical snippets and fascinating facts related to the forthcoming week. Add to that updates relating to the podcast, a touch of humour and a dash of "lots more". 29th June 2025.

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Happy Sunday!
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So, five days of madness end today. Glastonbury. In case that name means nothing to you, here's some background.
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Glastonbury is a small town 20 miles south of the historical port city of Bristol. This is quintessential South West England: rolling green hills stretching into the distance, farmhouses and church spires appearing here and there, marking the heart of one charming village after another, all connected by timeless footpaths and country lanes.
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The area was first inhabited in the Mesolithic period (Middle Stone Age), approximately 10,000 years ago. The nearby archaeological site, Glastonbury Lake Village, existed as far back as 300 BCE, while Glastonbury itself originated in the late seventh century.
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The area surrounding Glastonbury is steeped in Christian and Pagan legend. Glastonbury Tor commands the surrounding landscape, crowned by the ruins of St Michael’s Church. Together with Glastonbury Abbey, the trio represent the spiritual heartland of a rich blend of history and myth.
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Less than 10,000 people live in the town. However, every year around this time, 200,000 people descend on the area for the Glastonbury Festival - better known as just ‘Glastonbury’.
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Although you can visit a wide range of arts, crafts, markets, workshops and a hundred other activities, the festival is all about the music.
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Nearly every major pop star and band from the last 50 years has ‘played Glastonbury’; The Rolling Stones, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Bruce Springsteen, Diana Ross, Dolly Parton, Stevie Wonder, Johnny Cash, Paul Simon, Coldplay, David Bowie, Oasis, The Smiths, Elton John, Neil Diamond, Lionel Ritchie - the list goes on and on.
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The festival started in 1970, when dairy farmer Michael Eavis and his wife Jean founded the Pilton Pop, Folk and Blues Festival. Their motivation was partly to recreate the community, spiritual feel of the 1969 Woodstock festival at Bethel, New York, and partly because they needed the money.
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That first event, tucked into the rolling hills of Somerset, was characterised as “charmingly chaotic”, with one visitor dubbing it, “fairly disorganised and slightly disappointing, like the cannabis”.

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Out of Curiosity

Although the Glastonbury Festival takes place every year, it skips every fifth or sixth year to allow the land - and the locals - to take a breather.
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The event is actually closer to the picturesque village of Pilton. I guess the ‘Pilton Festival’ would more likely feature a tombola, coconut shy, homemade cakes, morris dancing and Doris Crumblebottom's prize-winning tomatoes.
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The Eavis’s introduced the name ‘Glastonbury’ a year later, trading the association with a humble village fair for that of a mystical and countercultural pilgrimage for music lovers everywhere. Smart move.

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Little did Michael and Jean realise that their small, local music event would become the 'largest and most famous greenfield music and performing arts festival in the world'.
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In 1970, you could have watched 14 acts, all performing on the one stage (though not at the same time). This year, you can enjoy any of 3,000 performances across more than 80 stages.
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The original entry fee in 1970 was £1, which also included access to the campsite and a pint of milk. This year, a ticket to Glastonbury will set you back a cool £375 ($515). The campsite is still included in the fee but you have to buy your own milk.

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The Somerset Levels, a slice of lowland in the South West running from the Bristol Channel inland as far as Glastonbury, have seen invasions of a very different kind over the years.
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The Romans invaded in 43 CE, followed by Saxons advancing from the Thames Valley in 658, the Vikings in 878 and then the Normans in 1088 as civil war broke out following the death of William the Conqueror.
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All these invasions were accompanied by ferocious battles. But perhaps the most famous battle of them all took place 20 miles up the road from Glastonbury; the 1685 Battle of Sedgemoor, the climax of the Monmouth Rebellion.

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By 1685, England’s political and religious foundations were fragile. The Reformation of 1534 under Henry VIII had established the Church of England, thereby disengaging the kingdom from direct Catholic influence.
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The following 150 years were characterised by religious conflict, bigotry, and widespread anxiety. Catholic minorities faced oppression while Protestant majorities fretted over Catholic efforts to regain political and religious control, real and imagined.
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​Charles II, invited back to the throne in 1660 after the English Civil War, had managed to steady the ship… to a point. However, Protestants kept a wary eye on the heir to the throne, Charles’ Catholic brother James.
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Charles had spawned several children from various affairs, but had no legitimate heir through his wife, Catherine of Braganza. So, when Charles II died in 1685, the new king, James II, became the Catholic ruler of a Protestant nation.
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The conditions for a perfect storm had aligned.

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The oldest of Charles II’s 12 bastard children was his son James Scott, who had taken the name of his wife Anne Scott when they married, due to her elevated status in the Scottish aristocracy.
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Scott was born in 1649 when Charles was eighteen and in hiding following his father’s execution the same year. Scott took refuge in Paris until he was thirteen, at which point Charles II brought him back to England and bestowed the title of the ‘Duke of Monmouth’.
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Monmouth pursued a successful military career, at one stage under the naval command of his Catholic uncle, James (the future James II). His talent, charisma and popular appeal unwittingly elevated his status among hopeful Protestants to that of a future heir to the throne. This, of course, was impossible under the law as defined by his father.
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Such aspirations would ultimately seal his fate.

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Scott’s relationship with his father deteriorated as he became more of a protestant figurehead and Charles continued to support the accession of his brother, the future James II. The Duke of Monmouth was forced into exile in Holland in 1679.
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For a period, Scott would return to England quietly, but when implicated in a plot to assassinate his father and uncle James, he remained in Holland indefinitely…. plotting.
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And then came the Monmouth Rebellion.
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In June 1685, the pretender to the throne landed at Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast in the South West of England. Monmouth had widespread Protestant support in this area. He would challenge the throne, an unambiguous Protestant versus Catholic rebellion.
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Monmouth was sure that his small 200-strong ad hoc army could rally significantly more support across the West Country in readiness for a showdown with the King’s forces.
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He would seize England’s second-largest city, Bristol. On reaching Taunton, on 20 June 1685, he proclaimed himself King James III. By the time Monmouth had marched across Shepton Mallet, Glastonbury and Bridgewater, his support had swelled to 5,000 men, though mainly labourers and artisans armed with little more than pikes, swords and a few pistols.

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The Somerset Levels soon turned against Monmouth and his men. They became bogged down in the marshland, exacerbated by poor weather. Progress was slow. Meanwhile, the King had been alerted, and the royalist army closed in.
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Despite his reputation as an experienced and notable military leader, Scott had fallen well short of the mark in preparing for the inevitable confrontation with the King’s men. He was under-funded, overly optimistic about the support that he could muster and naive about the King’s likely response.
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Monmouth was worried. On 5th July 1685, seeking to gain the upper hand, he led a surprise attack on the gathering royalists across the marshland in the dead of night.
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The surprise turned out to be his, as he got hopelessly lost in the dark and was discovered by a royalist patrol.
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Early morning, 340 years ago this coming Sunday, 6 July 1685, the Battle of Sedgemoor erupted.
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Firstly, the King’s cavalry routed the rebels’ horsemen, who either fled or were hacked down. Then, for a short period, the rebel infantryman stubbornly held off the cavalry advance.
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However, once the rebels were surrounded, morale deflated rapidly and the outcome was inevitable. The royal infantrymen and cavalry launched a fierce attack. Rebels were massacred in large numbers. Those fleeing were cut down by the cavalry.
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The battle had lasted less than three hours. By dawn, the rebellion was quashed. One thousand rebels were killed in battle, with a further 2,700 taken prisoner.
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The Duke of Monmouth had managed to escape, disguised as a peasant. However, two days later, he was discovered in a ditch some 100 miles away, just west of Ringwood, Hampshire.

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Out of Curiosity

Dame Alice Lisle lived at Moyles Court, just outside the town of Ringwood during the 17th century. She was the last woman to be executed by a ‘judicial sentence of beheading’ in England, having harboured two fugitives from the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685.

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Although the Duke of Monmouth had been found nearby, he had made no contact with Alice.
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Today, Alice’s 17th-century manor is the home of Moyles Court School, while one of my local pubs, a short walk up the road from the school, honours her memory - The Alice Lisle.

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A week after his capture, James Scott was executed for high treason at the Tower of London. As a last act of humiliation, Monmouth’s demise would be remembered as one of the most botched executions in English history.
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The executioner, James Ketch had a reputation for bungling executions, a dispiriting thought for those next in line.
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Ketch’s first blow merely glanced off Scott’s neck. As the condemned man turned his head in disbelief, a further two blows rained down, both still failing to sever Monmouth’s head. After a total of eight attempts, Ketch reverted to using his butcher’s knife to finish off the grizzly task.

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The Bloody Assizes were a series of trials held in various locations across the South West, specifically to administer justice following the Monmouth Rebellion. They were notable for their brutality.
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The trials heard the cases of 1,400 prisoners, of which 320 were executed by hanging, drawing and quartering, a barbaric practice where the victim was hanged until nearly dead, disembowelled, beheaded and then divided into four parts to be displayed in public.
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A further 800 rebels were sent to the West Indies to undertake forced labour, a sentence almost as assured of death due to the disease and harsh conditions endured.
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The Battle of Sedgemoor would be the last pitched battle fought on English soil.
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Ironically, James II’s reaction to the uprising was to increase the Catholic presence among his officers, which provoked a tipping point among Protestants. Three years later, James II fled to France as the The Glorious Revolution brought William III and Mary II to the throne.
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One hundred and fifty-five years of violent English religious conflict were all but over.

Dates with History

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Saturday

Charles Darwin might never have written his definitive evolutionary text if not for the experience, calibre, and sheer doggedness of one of Her Majesty’s great naval seamen.
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​Captain Robert FitzRoy commanded the HMS Beagle on which Charles Darwin spent five years of his life as the ship’s naturalist between 1831 and 1836.
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FitzRoy and Darwin developed a close, complex relationship during the trip, although they drifted apart in later life. FitzRoy’s devout Christian beliefs led him to publicly criticise Darwin’s 1859 book, “On the Origin of Species.”
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In later life, FitzRoy was appointed head of the UK Meteorological Office and became known as the founder of modern weather forecasting through his invention of the FitzRoy Barometer in the late 1850s.
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FitzRoy distributed his barometers to ports and fishing villages along the British coast, allowing him to gather accurate weather data based on the recorded barometric pressures.
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These were the world’s first officially recorded scientific weather forecasts and significantly improved maritime safety.
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Captain Robert FitzRoy was born 220 years ago this coming Saturday, 5 July 1805.

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Out of Curiosity

I recently read a delightful book by author Harry Thompson, ‘This Thing of Darkness’. (Thanks Jessie!) I had struggled to enjoy historical fiction for years until I came across this book. It was a joy to read Thompson’s interpretation of the complex relationship between Darwin and FitzRoy.
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The book is true to the historical incidents and events of the five-year voyage and up to FitzRoy’s death by suicide in 1865. Recommended.

On Robert FitzRoy’s fifth birthday, another world-famous pioneer came into the world. Phineas Taylor Barnum was born 215 years ago this Saturday, 5 July 1810, in Bethel, Connecticut.
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As is often the case with overachievers, the young Phineas grew up quickly after his father’s death. He built a career in publishing, establishing The Herald of Freedom newspaper in 1831.
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Barnum’s career trajectory pivoted when he moved to New York in 1834 to look for new business opportunities. His publisher’s keen eye for a story led him to Joice Heth, promoted at the time as the 161-year-old former nursemaid of George Washington, the first President of the United States.
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Without hesitation, Phineas purchased the rights to market Joice Heth, despite the ridiculousness of the claim. It was a marriage made in heaven; Barnum was a rampant self-promoter and expert in media manipulation; Joice wasn’t.
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The Heth exhibition was a resounding success, leading to Barnum’s purchase of the American Museum, New York in 1841, and to his lifelong passion, the circus. P.T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome opened in 1871.
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The world was introduced to a host of performers, notable for their distinctive features, medical conditions and unusual talents. Today, the entertainment would be branded as exploitation, but many of Barnum’s troupe earned good money for appearing, so…
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Alongside Joice Heth appeared General Tom Thumb (Charles Stratton), The Four-Legged Woman (who did have four legs apparently), Chang and Eng Bunker the Siamese twins, The Bearded Woman (actually at least four beared women were employed), The Wild Men of Borneo (two superstrength brothers with dwarfism) and let’s not forget Zip the Pinhead (William Henry Johnson, born with microcephaly where the head is significantly smaller than expected).
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A few incarnations and partnerships later, Barnum’s Circus would become known as the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, billed as “The Greatest Show on Earth”.

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Out of Curiosity

The timing of the release of Charles Darwin’s tour de force, On the Origin of Species, in 1859, was opportune for Phineas Barnum, as he shamelessly exploited its popularity in publicising his exhibits. Barnum's human ‘curiosities’ would be paraded as proof of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
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Truth be damned….
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Question of the Week

Fifty years ago on Saturday, 5 July 1975, an American became the first black man to win the Wimbledon Men’s Singles Tennis Final.
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Who was he?

And Finally…

Late one evening, 125 years ago this Wednesday, 2 July 1900, an airship took off from Friedrichshafen, Germany and flew for 20 minutes across Lake Constance.
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The airship was the LZ1, built by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, and marked the pioneering flight of powered, controlled rigid airships.
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The Zeppelins served well in WWI as reconnaissance craft but were more limited in their role as bombers. After the war, the 1920 Treaty of Versailles banned the use of Zeppelins as military airships, so the company focused on passenger transport. The heyday of the Zeppelins came in the 1920s and 1930s, when they offered luxurious long-distance travel.
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Most notable of the passenger Zeppelins was the 800 feet long LZ 129 Hindenburg, which completed 17 round-trips between Germany and North and South America. It’s fastest transatlantic trip westbound took 90 hours, while the return eastbound trip was completed in half that time due to the prevailing westerly winds.
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However, the Hindenburg’s final, and fatal, trip ended abruptly at Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937, when a massive fire engulfed the airship just prior to docking. Thirty-five passengers and crew perished, although, remarkably, 62 people survived.
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The disaster brought a swift end to passenger airship travel.

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Steve

HOST & CHIEF STORY HUNTER

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P:S: Incidentally, I am always keen to receive your feedback to help me continuously improve this newsletter and the podcast. Just hit reply to this email and...... let it rip! I respond to every email that I receive.

Question of the week… answer

The first black man ever to win the Wimbledon Men’s Singles Tennis Final was the Richmond-born Virginian, Arthur Ashe. His 1975 victory is remembered for overcoming the defending champion and favourite, Jimmy Connors.
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Away from tennis, Ashe was a vocal advocate for social justice, particularly regarding the racial barriers that existed in sport at the time.

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Tragically, Arthur Ashe died at the age of 49 in 1993 from AIDS-related pneumonia, having contracted HIV from a blood transfusion during heart surgery. Before he died, he spoke out for AIDS awareness and established the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS.
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After Ashe’s death, the outstanding funds within the organisation underwent several transformations before being allocated to the Arthur Ashe Legacy at UCLA, which remains active today.
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​Althea Gibson blazed a path for black women 18 years earlier by winning the Wimbledon Women’s Singles Tennis Final in 1957.

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