Greetings from the land of my birth! We are currently on our annual big trip to the UK and doing some travelling to see family and friends before striking out for the far north of the British Isles to the highlands of Scotland for my nephew’s wedding.
We have family in the south west of England so we spent some time in the county of Somerset, and I got to know a bit more about the historic town of Taunton during this visit. There are a number of places in the USA and Australia that were colonized by the English and named after this historic place, most famously Taunton in Massachusetts. I admit I am generally very negative about the cold, grey and wet English weather but we enjoyed an exceptionally beautiful sunny day with blue skies and highs in the low 70s which is highly unusual for anywhere in the UK in April.
But don’t worry, it soon fell back to its cold, rainy normality right after we left!
My regular readers will know that I love history, and England’s Taunton has a rich and varied past with the town dating back to at least the 7th century. Taunton is the county town (similar to a capital city of a state) of the County of Somerset, located about 150 miles west of London. Somerset has about 1,600 square miles making it the seventh largest county in England. By comparison, the state of Georgia is 37 times bigger at over 59,000 square miles.
The name Taunton comes from the Old English phrase Tone Tun which means a settlement by the River Tone. The town grew in importance with a charter granted by the king in the 10th century. During the medieval period, Taunton’s wealth grew as a center for the wool trade with plenty of nearby green pasture for sheep to graze. Remember that it takes a lot of rain to produce the lush English pasture land but Somerset has some of the most beautiful in England with its gentle rolling hills edged up against some spectacular coastline. Wool from Taunton was exported to Europe and as far afield as Africa, and wealthy wool merchants built the gorgeous church of St Mary Magdalene in the town center. The town was dominated and controlled by this church but during the early 17th century, Taunton was granted a new charter giving it a mayor and freeing it from the influence of the Church of England and the Bishops of Winchester who ran St Mary Magdalene.
Many Americans are not aware that England had our own civil war from 1642-1651 which led to the execution of King Charles I and the establishment of a republic before the king’s son returned from exile in 1660. At that time the monarchy was reestablished under King Charles II but with fewer royal powers than his father and predecessors had enjoyed. It is interesting that the UK’s monarch since 2022, King Charles III, is the first to be called Charles in over 300 years.
Taunton supported the Parliamentarian cause in England’s Civil War as it opposed the king In 1643 a Royalist army marched on the town and the natives surrendered without a fight. The Royalists controlled the town for a year but in 1644 it was recaptured by Parliamentary troops, and over the next few years control of Taunton went back and forth. When Charles II regained the throne he annulled Taunton’s charter as a punishment for the town’s support of his father’s enemies. He was persuaded to renew the charter in 1677, although he ordered the Castle to be ‘slighted’ so it could not be used against him in any future war. It did, however, continue in use as a prison.
In 1685 the Duke of Monmouth launched an ill-fated attempt to take the throne of England.
He was welcomed by the people of Taunton and was declared king by the town until his defeat. As Taunton had supported him, over 500 rebels were held at Taunton Castle and brought to trial in a series of famous, brutal hearings infamously known as the Bloody Assizes in the west of England, during the autumn of 1685. Presided over by “Hanging Judge” George Jeffreys, the courts saw over 1,400 people tried, leading to over 150 executions and over 800 condemned to slavery, many being transported to the West Indies. Every British child learns about the Bloody Assizes in school history class, and how it established a legacy of extreme state violence during the rest of that century.
Sir Benjamin Hammet, a 16th century industrialist and politician, restored the medieval castle and the Taunton Museum opened in the castle in 1778 (in 1958 it was renamed the Somerset County Museum). The wool trade declined by the 18th century, but Taunton became a center for the silk trade. The arrival of the railway in 1842 enhanced Taunton’s position as a busy market town, and it was named as the county town of Somerset in 1935, beating another local coastal town, Westonsuper- Mare, for the title. There is a lot more information at www.history.com and www.britannica.com I will leave you with a quote from famous 20th century English author who wrote among other works, 101 Dalmatians, Dodie Smith: “What is it about the English countryside, why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?” God Bless America!
Lesley grew up in London, England and made Georgia her home in 2009. She can be contacted at lesley@lesleyfrancispr.com or via her PR and marketing agency at www. lesleyfrancispr.com