Ancestral work with a team of shamanic professionals. Today, we honour ancestors involved in the Battle of Sedgemoor and Bloody Assizes, 1685.
The Zoyland heritage centre ask. ‘Perhaps one of your ancestors was one of the 1000’s of ‘rebels’ who were killed, or one of the 320 who were executed or one of the 800 transported as bonded slaves?’
Whilst Thomas Hubl tells us. ‘To assist its repair, we must choose to acknowledge to witness and to thereby feel together, what has actually occurred, even the most horrific details.’
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Event Price – Free
Places Available – 25
- Email – enquiries@chapmanjenny.com
There are different types of battle re-enactments. The Sealed Knot – oldest re-enactment society in the UK – brings history to life by staging events throughout the country. Its aims are ‘not to glorify war, but to honour those that died in the many battles of the English Civil War’. Shakespeare recreated famous British battles in his historic plays to put on stage. Much as Bryan Doerries produces performances of Greek tragedies for ‘soldiers returned from conflict, addicts, prison communities, victims of natural disasters, and other vulnerable people’. He says, ‘the plays reveal something timeless and profound about the experience of war’.
This battle re-enactment and ceremonial work includes a trip to Winchester, where the trials started on 25 August 1685. Here we remember Dame Alice Lyle who was beheaded for harbouring battle fugitives. On 2nd September a ceremony will be performed on the sea moors with the specific aim of ‘raising the dead’. In Greek mythology a psychopomp is a guide of souls to the place of the dead. They help souls transcend to the light if they are stuck in our everyday reality. We will visit Burnham-on-Sea and Thorngrove (9th September 2022) and the homes of my 5th great grand-mother and grand-father. They likely carried inter-generational trauma related to the battle and its aftermath. Finally, a visit to Somerset County Museum in Taunton (19th September 2022). ‘Of more than 500 prisoners brought before the court on 18th and 19th September, 144 were hanged and their remains displayed around the county.’
Excerpt – Becoming and Beyond
‘She (the author) could not spot a Chapman, Aldridge, Coward, Farnham, Clinton or Terrett amongst the names of those who sailed on the Jamaica Merchant or who were tried to be hanged by Judge Jeffreys. But there were other family surnames. Robert Jones was hanged at Minehead and John, William and Jonas Browne along with a Michael Powell were transported to the Caribbean. There were Allens. John, Richard and Thomas who sailed on the ‘Happy Return’ to Barbados and Ship John (destination not recorded) along with Henry Allen who was fined and whipped at Dorchester and Robert Allen who was convicted to be hanged in Somerton.’
