This transaction took place the 25th, the day before Monmouth’s arrival at Philip’s Norton, and may have, in a considerable degree, contributed to the disappointment, of which we learn from Wade, that he at this time began bitterly to complain.  He was now upon the confines of Wiltshire, and near enough for the bodies of horse, upon whose favourable intentions so much reliance had been placed, to have effected a junction, if they had been so disposed; but whether that Adlam’s intelligence had been originally bad, or that Pembroke’s proceedings at Froome had intimidated them, no symptom of such an intention could be discovered.  A desertion took place in his army, which the exaggerated accounts in the Gazette made to amount to near two thousand men.  These dispiriting circumstances, added to the complete disappointment of the hopes entertained from the assumption of the royal title, produced in him a state of mind but little short of despondency.  He complained that all people had deserted him, and is said to have been so dejected, as hardly to have the spirit requisite for giving the necessary orders.

From this state of torpor, however, he appears to have been effectually roused by a brisk attack that was made upon him on the 27th, in the morning, by the Royalists, under the command of his half-brother, the Duke of Grafton.  That spirited young nobleman (whose intrepid courage, conspicuous upon every occasion, led him in this, and many other instances, to risk a life, which he finally lost in a better cause), heading an advanced detachment of Lord Feversham’s army, who had marched from Bath, with a view to fall on the enemy’s rear, marched boldly up a narrow lane leading to the town, and attacked a barricade, which Monmouth had caused to be made across the way, at the entrance of the town.  Monmouth was no sooner apprised of this brisk attack, than he ordered a party to go out of the town by a by-way, who coming on the rear of the Grenadiers while others of his men were engaged with their front, had nearly surrounded them, and taken their commander prisoner, but Grafton forced his way through the enemy.  An engagement ensued between the insurgents and the remainder of Feversham’s detachment, who had lined the hedges which flanked them.  The former were victorious, and after driving the enemy from hedge to hedge, forced them at last into the open field, where they joined the rest of the king’s forces, newly come up.  The killed and wounded in these encounters amounted to about forty on Feversham’s side, twenty on Monmouth’s; but among the latter there were several officers, and some of note, while the loss of the former, with the exception of two volunteers, Seymour and May, consisted entirely of common soldiers.