COTHELSTON HILL. 13 
“Those beautiful towers which we see on every side, 
have been supposed by some to bear witness to the grati- 
tude of the Tudor Monarchs to the faithful West for its 
support of the house of Lancaster; but this I fear is but a 
fancy. Henry VII. shewed more anxiety to drive Perkin 
Warbeck and his Cornish supporters from Taunton, than 
to reward those who had supported him in his difhiculties. 
“Here immediately below us is Cothelston, the resi- 
dence of Sir John Stawel, the daring royalist leader in the 
great Rebellion; and from Taunton it was that Blake led 
the Parliamentarian army to destroy his house and to 
besiege the stronghold of Dunster. Tradition says that 
the arms of Sir John Stawel’s forces were kept in Bishop’s 
Lydeard tower, and his levies made in a field which still 
bears the name of “Standards;” and the skirmish at 
I.ydeard between him and Blake was described to me by 
an o!d man who had heard it from his great-grandfather, as 
graphically as if he had witnessed it himself. He assured 
me that when Blake’s men and Sir John’s rode through 
Bishop’s Lydeard street together, they made more noise 
tban he had ever heard in his life; and I can easily conceive 
that it was not a very quiet ride. Gore and Cothelston 
were both the scenes of judicial murder during the bloody 
assize of Jeffries; a gentleman of the name of Gore having 
been executed and his limbs nailed to a tree at the former 
place, and two more, Bovet and Blackmore having been 
hanged on the arch before old Cothelston house. 
“The time will not permit me at present to do more 
than to call your attention to those two columns, that at 
Burton Pynsent, erected by that great statesman, Lord 
Chatham ; the other, above Wellington, raised to the me- 
mory of the greatest statesman and warrior that England, 
and perhaps the world, has ever seen.” 
