Lyme Regis Dorset United Kingdom

Argyll, whose staunch Protestantism and great territorial influence had made him suspect to the Duke of York after he had become high commissioner in Scotland in 1680, had been sentenced to death on a dubious charge of high treason in 1681 but had escaped to Holland and here had joined the conspiracy to procure the succession of the Duke of Monmouth.

Argyll and Monmouth both began their expeditions from the Netherlands, where James's nephew, William III, had neglected to detain them or put a stop to their recruitment efforts.

Monmouth, having set sail from Holland for southwest England, a strongly Protestant region, with three small ships, four light field guns and fifteen hundred muskets, had landed on June 11 with eighty-two supporters, including Lord Grey of Warke, and around three hundred men, at Lyme Regis in Dorset.

Monmouth had been promised a large army and universal support by his supporters in the Hague, thinking that on landing he would be able to march unopposed to London.

King James is soon warned of Monmouth's arrival: two customs officers from Lynne arrived in London on June 13, having ridden some two hundred miles post haste.

Monmouth, having proclaimed himself king, recruits tradesmen and farmers as he marches through the west country, but is unable to gather enough rebels to defeat even James's small standing army.

Fossil collecting had been in vogue in the late eighteenth century and early nneteenth century, at first as a pastime akin to stamp collecting.

It is gradually transforming into a science as the importance of fossils to geology and biology becomes understood.

Mary Anning of Lyme Regis caters to the commercial side of the field, selling her finds.

She had soon forged relationships within the scientific community, whose passion for fossils has grown to be a major source of income for her.

The cause of this connection had been one of Anning's first discoveries, the skeleton of an ichthyosaur, in 1811.

Her next major discovery had been a real first, the first-ever skeleton of a plesiosaur in 1821.

In 1828, she discovers an important fossil of a pterosaur, the first found outside Germany and thought to be the first complete skeleton.

Though these three finds are what make her mark on history, Anning is to continue collecting for the remainder of her life, making numerous other contributions to early paleontology.