It was a regular pilgrimage. Whenever he returned to England, Daniel Rawson always found time to visit the county where he had been born and where his father had been executed for his part in the Monmouth rebellion. He reached Somerset that afternoon to find it gilded by the sunshine and scoured by a stiff breeze that blew his horse's mane almost vertical. Daniel was prompted by curiosity as well as by a sense of duty. He wanted to see how the farm they had once owned was now faring, and if anyone in the vicinity still remembered him. Most of all, he wanted to see again the fields, hills, woods, ponds and rivers he had known and loved as a boy.

As he rode along, he was struck by how different it all was to Holland. When he and his mother had sailed to Amsterdam, they had left rolling countryside behind them and settled in a land that was uniformly flat and menaced by the sea. Only the ingenuity of Dutch engineers kept the waters at bay. Instead of farming the broad acres of Somerset, Daniel had moved to the busiest port in Europe, a clean, well- ordered, prosperous city that taught him to live another kind of life altogether. But he never forgot the joy of growing up in rural seclusion in England even though that joy had been rudely curtailed.

After visiting his old farm, he went on to Chedzoy and Westonzoyland, deliberately crossing the site of the battle that had led to Nathan Rawson's capture. It looked so peaceful and untrammelled now. Where scores of rebel soldiers had met gruesome deaths, cattle grazed unconcernedly. Thick green grass covered the mass graves into which brave men of the West Country had been tumbled after they had been shot or cut down in the searing heat of battle. Daniel could almost hear the thunder of the cavalry, the rattle of musket fire, the angry clash of weaponry, the roar of artillery, the frantic neighing of wounded horses and the heart-rending cries of agony from dying men. Sedgemoor would always be a field of slaughter to him.