Monmouth Rebel, The

DESCRIPTION: "I wasn't but a growing boy when first I came to arms Behind the Duke of Monmouth," but the troops they fought at Sedgemoor were "the best, the very best." He flees the country, and takes a pardon, but is frightened by what Jeffries did to Lady Lisle
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1987 (Browne-FolkSongsOfOldHampshire)
KEYWORDS: rebellion escape royalty punishment judge
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1649 - Birth of James Scott, the future Duke of Monmouth, the illegitimate son of the future King Charles II
1685 - Death of Charles II brings his brother James II -- who is Catholic -- to the throne, causing great discontent in Protestant England
July 6, 1685 - Battle of Sedgemoor
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Browne-FolkSongsOfOldHampshire, pp. 75-77, "The Monmouth Rebel" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES [11584 words]: There are several other songs about the Duke of Monmouth, though only "Bothwell Bridge" [Child 206] seems to have had any hold on tradition. For the others collectively, see "Young Jemmy."
Charles II of England and Scotland, the first Stuart king after the Restoration, died in 1685 without a legitimate child. The clear heir was Charles's brother James VII and II, the Duke of York -- but James was notoriously Catholic. (A fact that would result in his overthrow in 1688-1689; see the notes to "The Vicar of Bray," "The Boyne Water (I)," etc.) In 1685, most were willing to accept James on the throne -- after all, his daughters and heirs were Protestant.
Most, not all. A few decided instead to support Charles II's illegitimate son the Duke of Monmouth. Monmouth raised a rebellion, but it was crushed at the Battle of Sedgemoor, described in this song. (I can't help but note how evocative a name it is: "Sedge" derives from Old English sećǵ, sword -- Onions, p. 806 -- so while "Sedgemoor" on its face means "moor of sedges," it could ultimately mean "moor of swords" or even "field of swords.")
James, Duke of Monmouth (1649-1685) was the son of Lucy Walter, mistress of Charles II. "Lucy Walter was not a whore. But she did belong to that restless and inevitably light-moralled generations of young ladies who grew up in the unparalleled times of the Civil War.... Charles himself never questioned Monmouth's parentage. He assumed responsibility for the child from his birth and was inclined rather to remove him from his unsuitable mother's care than to consign him to a limbo of doubtful bastardy" (Fraser, pp. 64-65). The best guess is that Monmouth's parents had met in 1648 when Charles, still a teenager, was preparing to lead a fleet to try to retake England, or rescue his father, or make some sort of symbolic gesture against the parliamentary forces that held Charles I prisoner (Keay, pp. 6-7. This dating is very uncertain, and is based only on when Monmouth was born; there are no records of any use about Charles and Walter, and even the date of Monmouth's birth is highly uncertain, being given only by unreliable sources -- Hutton, p. 24. Given the number of men Walter had been involved with, one wonders if it was truly certain that Charles was the father (Fraser, p. 65, mentions occasional doubts about this point), though Charles never seemed to have any doubts. (According to Brennan, p. 18, people thought the boy James was the "spitting image" of Charles at the same age. This I doubt on two grounds. First, very few people would have seen both of them as boys, and second, Monmouth was always very good-looking, whereas Charles was, at best, funny-looking, and most of his portraits are flat-out ugly. There are reasons to doubt Walter's fidelity even in this period; within a few years, she would have a daughter Mary by one of Charles's friends; Keay, p. 21. It is fascinating that one of the few who doubted Monmouth's paternity was James Duke of York -- Clifton, p. 78 -- who was Charles's eventual heir and was threatened by Monmouth's popularity.)
(Most think that Walter was Charles's first mistress, although Fraser, p. 37, thinks he might have had an affair before that, with -- of all people -- his former nurse Christabella Wyndham. Charles was fourteen, so it's biologically possible, but between the age difference and near-universal aversion to people one was close to in childhood, it strikes me as unlikely.)
(According to Clifton, p. 77, Monmouth late in life would claim that Lucy was descended from King Edward IV, which would give him royal blood -- if probably bastard blood -- on both sides of his ancestry, but this seems unlikely, and even if it is true that he descended from one of Edward's various bastards, that gives him no more claim to the throne than being the illegitimate son of Charles did.)
The boy James is believed to have been born about three months after his grandfather Charles I was executed (Keay, pp. 12-13), although the date is unknown. Thus James's father was nominally king at the time he was born, but a king who appeared to have no prospects whatsoever, unless some European prince supported them. As it turned out, the French kept the English princes around, but on a tight leash, which didn't make Charles II any more popular with those around him. Relations between Charles and Lucy eventually became so bad that Charles on more than one occasion tried to kidnap his own son (Keay, pp. 1-2. The third attempt would succeed (Keay, pp. 33-34), which perhaps just as well, because Walter died of disease soon after, at the age of 28 or so, in 1658 (Fraser, p. 155, says explicitly that it was venereal disease, but gives no details; it was James II who said so, according to Clifton, but James was an unreliable witness. Fraser, pp. 154-155, and Clifton, p. 79, claim that she had two abortions, but given the low odds of surviving an abortion in this period, this strikes me as unlikely. Or perhaps a third attempt might have killed her. But I suspect that we just don't know her cause of death).
There was eventually a story that, on her deathbed, she told her confessor that she was married to Charles, and gave him tokens and told him to hide them until Charles was dead -- but the confessor died before Charles and the evidence was lost (Clifton, p. 81). Like all the claims of marriage, this is absurd -- if Lucy had proof, the best thing she could have done for Monmouth was to offer it. Perhaps she might have told her confessor that the boy James was *not* Charles's son, but there is no evidence even of that.
But the attempts to make Monmouth legitimate came later. The fact that Walter was dead by 1660 is significant, for two reasons: First, she was dead before Charles contracted his actual marriage, so it would have been possible to claim that she and Charles were actually married and Monmouth was legitimate (as indeed was to happen); and second, she wasn't around to testify to anything when these sorts of questions started to arise.
Eventually Monmouth's supporters would try to claim that Charles II and Walter had married. "But the rival assertion... that [Walter] secretly married Charles and that Monmouth was therefore legitimate, is not so much dubious as fantastic. Thirty years after his birth, when it was pressingly necessary for Monmouth's adherents to prove the existence of this marriage, all they could turn up with was a set of rumours among obscure people that such a wedding had taken place early in the relationship. They name two different clergymen as the reputed conductors of the ceremony, but neither individual was in Holland at the time. Modern suggestions that Lucy and Charles could have met and married in Pembrokeshire or Exeter during the Civil War founder upon the fact that there is no evidence that she was in either place at the time, while he never visited the former and passed swiftly through the latter.... The alternative conclusion open to those who favour the idea of a wedding, that in his hectic ten days in July Charles met a commoner and immediately married her, seems insanity" (Hutton, p. 26).
Charles in 1679 gave an explicit statement given to the Privy Council that they were not married (Clifton, p. 110(.
Monmouth's bastardy is reinforced by the fact that, early in life, he didn't even have a surname! For a while he was known by the name of Crofts, after one of his tutors while he was in exile (Brennan, p. 23), but eventually he took his wife's name and was known by the name of James Scott (Brennan, p. 46).
Fraser, p. 65, points out that, even if Charles wanted to marry Walter, he simply couldn't afford to. With the family in exile and on the brink of having the English monarchy extinguished, one of the few diplomatic coins Charles had to offer was a dynastic marriage; he couldn't get married without getting "value" for it. Maybe he could have married Walter later, but if he did, it would surely have been documented, and in any case, he got over her quite quickly. Besides, given her history of extramarital affairs, it's unlikely that Charles would have had to marry her to get into her bed.
It is true that, during the mid 1650s when Lucy Walter was hanging around in the Netherlands and Charles was wandering around in exile, Charles's sister twice referred to Lucy as Charles's "wife" (Clifton, p. 78) -- but this was at a time when Lucy was involved with another man, so "wife" in this context pretty definitely did not refer to an actual marriage (Hutton, pp. 96-97). It was just a euphemism, but one that caused trouble when discovered.
The boy's position was anomalous. Astoundingly, he was the first royal bastard in a century and a quarter (Keay, p. 15), since the time of Henry VIII -- Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I had been childless; James I seems to have been interested primarily in men; and Charles I, for all his myriad faults, seems to have been devoted to his wife. In the past, royal bastards had been common and unexceptional -- Henry I had had dozens, and Henry II and Edward IV in particular had had many side affairs also. But starting with Richard II in 1377, other than Edward IV and Henry VIII, most English kings had had puritanical (or, in some cases, obsessive, or simply addled) streaks, and ceased to take as many mistresses, so England came to have less use for illegitimate royals. Given that the English Commonwealth was run by Puritans, the fact that the legitimate King had a bastard was not likely to improve his position, nor would the fact that he had had a liaison with a woman who now had an illegitimate child by another man (Keay, p. 21. In fact, when Lucy Walter went to England to try to claim an inheritance, she and her children were taken prisoner -- and released by Cromwell so that they could be used in propaganda against Charles; Keay, p. 28; Clifton, p. 79. Incidentally, this is strong evidence that Lucy and Charles were never married; had the Commonwealth had evidence of a marriage, they would have publicized it, because it would make it impossible for Charles to form a marriage alliance with some other power that might help him invade England). Much later, Charles II would recognize and ennoble a bunch of other bastard children (Keay, p. 160; there were supposedly seventeen in all. Fraser, p. 153, say the next bastard was born in 1651, but she was a girl, so she didn't have much political influence) -- but even though he remained friendly with many of their mothers, none of those other children were politically significant. (At the time. Fraser, pp. 412-413, observes that a far-too-high proportion of the House of Lords over the coming centuries were composed of the descendants of Charles II's bastards. One can't help but suspect that British history would have been better if either someone with a time machine had sent Charles a pack of Trojans or if parliament had passed a law that you couldn't make illegitimate children into nobles. It wouldn't have hurt anyone to leave them as well-endowed gentry....)
Monmouth was hardly prepared to be the leader of anything. Although a handsome boy who grew up to be a handsome man, he had had a chaotic childhood, and when Charles captured him, he was taken away from everyone he had ever known. All those shocks probably affected him psychologically; he proved indecisive and not very brave. And his education had been terrible; at age nine, he could not sign his name and couldn't even count to twenty! (So Keay, p. 35; Hutton, p. 126, adds that he couldn't read. Clifton, p. 82, says that, although he eventually learned basic literacy, "his orthography was child-like and his spelling bizarre even by the standards of the day.") His limited literacy probably held him back in his later years, although it didn't prevent him from being a good leader of troops.
Soon after the Restoration, young James entered the nobility as the Earl of Buccleuch, when, at 13, he was married to Anna Scott, Countess of Buccleuch since the death of her father and older sister. Anna's mother felt she had to marry her off to prevent someone else from taking the earldom after her husband had died (Keay, pp. 45-47; although Keay says the marriage was troubled, they would eventually have seven children; Keay, pp. 76, 297; Brennan, p. 47, although only three survived infancy; Brennan, p. 129 says only two reached adulthood -- though the modern Dukes of Buccleuch are descended from one of the survivors. Anna's last child, indeed, was stillborn, perhaps as a result of the fear Anna suffered at the time of Monmouth's implication in the "Rye House Plot." The Monmouths managed to produce that brood despite all his infidelities and even though Anna hurt herself while dancing and walked with a limp for the rest of her life; Keay, p. 94). With the Buccleuch title -- quite a rich one, by Scottish standards -- in prospect, Charles added the title of Duke of Monmouth (not a very established dukedom, although there had been two past dukes; Keay, p. 58), as well as Earl of Doncaster (Keay, p. 57). Furthermore, Charles acknowledged Monmouth as "Our Naturall Sonne" -- a bastard, but a son (Keay, p. 58). Then Charles made a sort of strategic mistake -- he raised the topic of "legitimizing" Monmouth. He didn't mean for purposes of the succession; it was just to clear things up with the Buccleuch inheritance. But the matter went in the public record (Keay, pp. 58-59), and the matter would come up again.
Similarly, his first coat of arms omitted the bar sinister to indicate illegitimacy. This caused Charles's queen Catherine of Braganza to protest, and the next coat of arms rectified the matter (Fraser, p. 212).
Although Charles had provided for Monmouth, and quite handsomely, he did little to teach him how to manage his wealth or life; at 14, Monmouth was released from his schooling and set free to do whatever he wanted. And mostly what he wanted was to amuse himself rather than learn or do work; he rarely even bothered to write to his father (Keay, pp. 69-71). Supposedly his gang of cronies even took part in a murder (Clifton, p. 89). He was certainly not being groomed to be anything useful until, out of the blue, Charles let Monmouth purchase the appointment as commander of the then-new Life Guards (Hutton, p. 252, who thinks it was a result of Charles having a brief quarrel with his brother York, though how Monmouth's appointment figured into that escapes me, except that it perhaps helped start the endless feud between uncle and nephew). Monmouth and his wife ran through money faster than probably anyone in the country, and repeatedly ran out of cash -- but instead of learning better, he just kept being bailed out by his father (Keay, pp. 73-75). And he had so many side affairs that there were a lot of rumors about venereal disease (Keay, pp. 96-97), though given all the children he fathered, it doesn't seem likely that he could have suffered anything too severe.
Monmouth never really did anything with himself until he came of age and was appointed to raise and lead the English force that Charles II sent to France to help Louis XIV attack the Netherlands. (An example of Charles II's pursuing short- rather than long-term advantage, since Louis XIV was basically out to conquer the world -- but at the time was willing to buy English help.) Monmouth found that he liked being a soldier (Keay, pp. 112-119), and he was good at it ("the 'Journal' of his campaign reveals a very professional commander taking considerable pains, and making the troops' welfare his prime consideration"; Clifton, p. 100). Keay, pp. 123-129, and Brennan, p. 54, think that his reckless courage in the siege or Maastricht contributed materially to the fortress's surrender. Certainly he led successful attacks against strong forces and high odds (Clifton, p. 93, who says that it proved nothing about his qualities of higher leadership although "he was a very good junior officer" with the "capacity to improvise" and "a valuable instinct for vigorous action in an emergency"). It makes a strange contrast to his abject cowardice after Sedgemoor.
After James, then Duke of York, turned Catholic, he had to give up his military offices. Charles II was willing to give some of them to Monmouth -- but Monmouth demurred, arguing (probably correctly) that he needed more experience (Keay, pp. 136-137). It again makes a strange contrast with Monmouth's later ambition.
Oddly, although he was an abominable manager of his own finances, he proved a good steward of money for other purposes, as e.g. when he was Master of Horse and in charge of the royal stables (which he successfully reformed) and his army commands (Keay, pp. 151-155); eventually he became in effect the administrative head of the (new) standing army, and might have become the combat head as well except for the jealousy of the Duke of York (Keay, pp.156-158, who suggests that he did a good job in the role. Clifton, pp. 95-96, lists three significant reforms he undertook, both in discipline and in training). In 1678, he added the job as the top combat commander as well (Keay, pp. 174-175). This began the chain of events that eventually led to his rebellion and death. When Monmouth was appointed to his post, he received a commission from Charles II which referred to him as that monarch's son.
What made this complicated was the fact that Charles II had no legitimate children. That might have been less of an issue had it not been for the fact that Charles's legitimate heir, his brother James (II), the Duke of York, was Catholic. On several occasions there had been attempts in parliament to exclude James from the succession; all had failed, although sometimes it had taken extraordinary measures on Charles's part (e.g. by proroguing parliament when the bill was about to pass). One way to prevent James from succeeding was to have Monmouth declared legitimate. Charles gave this idea no encouragement, but the Earl of Shaftsbury proposed it, though few even of the Whigs supported the idea (Smith, p. 362). Thus, when Monmouth was made Captain General, the Duke of York and Monmouth had disagreed over whether it should call him Charles's "natural son" or just "son" -- York naturally wanted it clear that Monmouth was a bastard and York the heir to the throne. They interfered with the process of writing the commission, fighting over that one word (Keay, pp. 182-184).
Even that might not have been a big deal except that York combined Catholicism with the pig-headedness of the Stuarts and a sense of Divine Right of Kings that was even more extreme than the one that had resulted in the execution of his father Charles I. If there had been reason to think York would make a good king, people probably wouldn't have given Monmouth a second thought. But the signs that York would be an abominable monarch were already there in the 1670s.... At some point in the process, Monmouth and York became pretty clear enemies (Keay thinks it was rather late; Brennan, pp. 58-59, thinks it started very early). My guess is that York turned jealous much earlier, since Monmouth was all the things York was not: Handsome, tolerant, open-handed, and not a blithering idiot like York.
Clifton, p. 111, agrees: he does not think that Monmouth was gunning for the throne in the late 1670s: he "was thought ambitious for the succession; and in the same way his very personal feud with York could be misread as an attempt to replace the heir. Monmouth's actual intention was much simpler: to humiliate the man who had humiliated him." Clifton, pp. 116-117, points out the very good service Monmouth gave Charles II in the late 1670s, and thinks that Monmouth's problems came about because he felt unjustly treated. I don't know that that's what Monmouth felt -- but I certainly agree he was treated unjustly.
Ultimately, what evolved was a three-way tug-of-war: York, extremely unpopular but the heir to the throne and insistent upon his rights; Charles II, also unpopular and determined to uphold what he held to be the proper role of the monarchy by insisting on the legitimate succession even if it put his useless, Catholic brother on the throne; and Monmouth, with no right to the throne but extremely popular and on the right side of history. Charles basically limited Monmouth -- eventually destroying him -- to maintain the principle of legitimate succession. I find myself thinking that the right solution would have been to insist that York was the heir but to make him promise to resign his throne to William and Mary as soon as Charles died. But there was no way York was going to do that. And so the road to tragedy was paved.
As for who was the leading road-paver, I would nominate Titus Oates. Oates almsot single-handedly concocted the absurd Popish Plot, an alleged scheme to eliminate Charles II and replace him with the Duke of York, bringing back Catholicism in the process (Miller, p. 87). One account, not by Oates, claimed Monmouth was another who would be targeted by the plot (Brennan, p. 75), to eliminate any chance that he might succeed Charles. Most of what Oates said was false, but he named so many names that a few people on his list actually were engaged in questionable activities (Brennan, pp. 70-73), and it further blackened York and increased the tension between him and Monmouth (Keay, pp. 191-195). It also raised the political temperature sky-high (Kishlansky, pp. 254-255). The politics of the Popish Plot forced Charles to call a new parliament in 1678 (Miller, p. 91), after 17 years of the old one (Keay, p. 196) -- and the new parliament was far less friendly to Charles (Keay, p. 197), with the opposition members (soon to be called "Whigs") out-numbering the pro-government "Tories" by about two to one. Charles had to get York out of sight for a time; York and his wife Mary of Modena left for Holland (Keay, p. 198; Miller, p. 91), later shifting to Scotland. The fact that York was out of sight inevitably meant that more people started looking at Monmouth, even though Charles made no moves to change the succession (Keay, p. 199), and though Monmouth did not make any moves to encourage the talk, he did increase his involvement in politics and seems to have seen himself as a sort of arbitrator in and for the unfriendly parliament (Keay, pp. 200-201).
The meaning of what happened next is uncertain. Parliament was on its second reading of a bill to bar York from the succession (the "Exclusion Crisis"). Charles, without any warning, prorogued parliament (Keay, pp. 202-203). Just what was Monmouth's part in this? Keay thinks he was trying to negotiate a solution. But Miller, p. 97, thinks that Monmouth was "irrevocably committed to exclusion." Hutton, p. 373, also thinks he was pro-exclusion -- an attitude that would not endear him to Charles.
In his role as army commander, he did the crown good service in defeating the rebels at Bothwell Bridge (for which see "Bothwell Bridge" [Child 206]) in 1679. But in the aftermath, perhaps because of York's ongoing hostility, he started talking to the Whigs and their leader the Earl of Shaftesbury (Keay, pp. 208-209). Hutton, p. 376, refers to "the great (and deserved) credit which Monmouth had gained with his lightning victory" -- but adds "In his actions he had remained a loyal servant of his father throughout the crowded events of the previous year, but his associations had begun to trouble many" (pp. 376-377). Until this time, Monmouth had been entirely a supporter of the government. But, suddenly, he was at least flirting with the opposition. And he was becoming very popular -- not least because he had refused to slaughter the enemy at Bothwell Bridge after they surrendered (Keay, p. 213). And so the plot got even thicker.
Charles II suffered a brief but severe illness after this, and there was a succession crisis (Keay, pp. 217-220; Hutton, pp. 379-381) -- which featured York hurrying home to be prepared to take over. (Apparently there was fear in the pro-York camp that Monmouth would seize the throne if Charles died -- Hutton, p. 381 -- though there is no evidence that Monmouth even contemplated it.) When Charles recovered, he sent York back into exile -- but also fired Monmouth from all his jobs and sent him out of the country, explaining that it was the only way to get York to leave (Keay, pp. 220-221; Hutton, p. 382, however thinks that Charles was truly worried that Monmouth would interfere with James's path to the throne). One can hardly blame Monmouth for resenting York, who had apparently said that he would only leave England if Monmouth went too. But the circumstances led to a confusion: Monmouth went to the Netherlands to see William and Mary, and showed them an affectionate note from Charles II, which caused them to take him in (Keay, pp. 228-229) -- and apparently caused William to assume that Monmouth would continue to retain his father's affection even after Monmouth actually lost it.
Within days, Charles let York move to Edinburgh -- exile, of a sort, but at least he was in Britain, which improved his odds of claiming the throne. Monmouth was unwilling to accept that. He packed up and, unexpectedly, headed for England. The people welcomed him, but there was no welcome at Whitehall (Keay, pp. 234-235). Charles wouldn't even talk to him; he just ordered Monmouth back into exile (Keay, pp. 236-237).
It was only then, having gone from royal and national favorite, that he finally formed what seemed like a permanent emotional attachment to a woman, Henrietta, Countess of Wentworth, the only child of the deceased Lord Wentworth (Keay, p.239). He was enamored of her for the rest of his life and apparently regarded her as his proper wife, based in part on something that sounds a bit like a spiritual experience (Keay, pp. 302-303). As he prepared to go into exile, he even started writing (not very good) poetry to her (a sample is on p. 302 of Keay).
She would join him in exile -- indeed, they had to leave one place of exile when their hosts refused to condone their illicit relationship (Brennan, p. 49); she supposedly died of grief after his execution (Brennan, pp. 48, 50; Keay, pp. 375-376 summarizes her brief sufferings after she received word of Monmouth's death, Clifton, p. 120, reports that she died "from a broken heart some said, others more vindictive, of mercury poisoning from over-painting her face"). She was just 25; Brennan, p. 51, says they had an illegitimate child who, left without parents, was adopted by someone else and all but disappears.
Monmouth was now explicitly supporting the opposition; in 1680, he went on a sort of a progress around the country to drum up opposition to York (Keay, pp. 246-247). He didn't just parade around, either, but mixed with the people and engaged in sporting contests with them; he was clearly making himself a "man of the people" (Brennan, pp. 88-89). One woman with scrofula (the "King's Evil") had even insisted on touching him, then claimed that his touch had cured here (Keay, pp. 248-249). The Parliament that Charles II had so long tried to delay met in that year, and the House of Commons passed an Exclusion Bill. Monmouth spoke for it in the Lords, but Charles II was clearly opposed, and it failed (Keay, pp. 250-255).
That would not be the end of the issue. Charles called another election, and got another Whig parliament that wanted to set James aside. Charles's opposition was a little odd, because no one was proposing to block James's children; the idea was to have James's daughter Mary become heir to the throne, which simply skipped a generation. Presumably she would succeed anyway. But Charles was opposed -- and then the unthinkable happened: Shaftsbury proposed that Monmouth be declared the heir (Keay, pp. 260-261). This was a violation of all precedent -- illegitimate children simply could not succeed in England -- but it certainly put a black mark on Monmouth. Monmouth claimed no part of this, and Keay, p. 262, thinks he meant it, but Charles wasn't certain, and neither, I'm sure, was anyone else.
(Aside: Brennan, p. 84, claims that there were precedents for illegitimate children succeeding, and cites Mary I and Elizabeth I. But this is flatly bogus. Both Mary and Elizabeth were born in marriages that were, officially, legal. Henry VIII repudiated the marriages, but that is not the same thing. There are only two instances of illegitimate succession in English history: William the Conqueror and Henry VII Tudor. William was illegitimate in his Norman duchy, but since he took the English throne by right of conquest, that's irrelevant. Henry VII, although himself legitimate, descended from John of Gaunt in illegitimate line and had no claim to the throne -- but he too took the throne by right of conquest. And although he never admitted it, he knew he had no claim, which was why he married Elizabeth of York. The only relevant precedent for an illegitimate child succeeding was the case of Edward V. He had been barred from the succession in 1483 because he was allegedly illegitimate. And his claim was far better than Monmouth's -- there was undeniable proof that Edward's father had married his mother; it's just that evidence was offered that the marriage was not legal. There is no avoiding the fact: Illegitimate children *cannot* succeed in England, even if, as in Monmouth's case, they would clearly be an improvement on the legitimate heir.)
It was the start of a very hard period for Monmouth. His offices and pensions were gone, so all he had was his landed income -- and his wife had gone off to France with her children, and her landed wealth belonged to her, not him, and they were both spending money faster than it came in (Keay, pp. 268-269).
Things seemed to be pointing to a showdown: Parliament would not vote Charles funds while James was the heir. But Charles found an answer: Louis XIV of France offered him a subsidy which made him free of Parliament (Keay, p. 263). Charles had solved his problem: He dissolved Parliament and never called another (Keay, p. 264). With parliament out of his way, he charged Shaftsbury with treason (Keay, pp. 270-271).
It didn't work. The jury utterly rejected the charges against Shaftsbury (Keay, pp. 272-273), causing Charles to become even more upset with Monmouth and the Whigs -- though Shaftsbury would soon leave the country, and wouldn't live much longer anyway.
It was as the trial was being prepared that John Dryden wrote his famous satire "Absalom and Achitophel," which retold the story of King David and Absalom (told in the Bible in 2 Samuel 13-19) as a story of Charles II and Monmouth (Keay, p. 148), with Charles as David, Monmouth as his rebellious son Absalom, and Shaftsbury as Ahitophel, the wise counselor whose advice Absalom ignored. "With characteristic subtlety, Dryden adapts this long polemical tradition to his defense of Charles II against the attacks of his Whig opponents during the time of the Popish plot (1678-1681).... Dryden... portray[s] his hero [Absalom=Monmouth] as a fine young man misled by the consummate treachery of Ahitophel and dazzled, like Narcissus, by his own noble attributes" (Jeffrey, p. 13). It was good literature but imperfect prophecy; in the Biblical account, David outived Absalom, whereas Monmouth outlived Charles -- though both Absalom and Monmouth were executed for rebellion against the current monarch.
(Incidentally, Dryden wasn't the only famous poet to write covert references to Monmouth; Andrew Marvell, author of "To His Coy Mistress," refers to Monmouth in his poem about Charles II and his circle, "The Vows": "I will have a fine Son (in making though marr'd) If not ore a Kingdome to reigne or'e my guard And Successor, if not to me, to Gerrard." Based on Clifton, p. 90, there are probably other references by Marvell to Monmouth.)
Brennan, p. 61, thinks that Dryden's poem accurately describes the situation: Monmouth was led astray by his friends. Keay clearly thinks him his own agent but motivated by good causes. Fraser, p. 326 calls him a "popinjay." Hutton seems to think he was his own agent but out for his own ends. Clifton, p. 76, says that most have regarded him as "Handsome, weak, and empty-headed," but that this "under-estimates some of his talents, and fails to explain his character. What historians see as shallowness, foolish pride, and stupidity, appeared to Monmouth as conduct dictated by honour and self-respect. The son of Charles II, he resembled more in his obstinate loyalty to principle and honour James Duke of York, his uncle and enemy, with whom he is more often contrasted than compared." This strikes me as probably the best explanation: both Jameses "failed ultimately because they were trapped in courses of action from which a man cleverer and less scrupulous -- such as Charles II -- would have escaped" (Clifton, p. 76).
Clifton, p. 143, regarding the situation that finally forced Monmouth into exile before his father's death: "At worst [it was] pride which prevented him from taking the first step toward his father, or apologising to his uncle; at best it was refusal to betray his friends... even at the price of losing his newly-regained position as a favorite, to endure disgrace and exile. Monmouth fell not through his own stupidity, or following the withdrawal of external guidance, but because he could not subordinate honour to political calculation, or indeed to self-preservation." He had refused to be a witness against his allies in a capital case in which the crime was at best dubious. That strikes me as more virtue than vice.
I honestly think Monmouth wasn't quite as rigid as York -- but he was a generation younger; maybe, had he lived, he would have turned into the same sort of absolutist bigot. Certainly they shared a certain tendency to ignore big problems but panic in the face of small.
Reading about Monmouth's activities in this period (Keay, pp. 279-281), I can't help but wonder if he was becoming depressed -- he became more indecisive and less enthusiastic about his activities. This might explain why the Monmouth of Sedgemoor was so different from the Monmouth of the late 1660s. Of course, you'd probably be depressed too if your father put out a warrant for your arrest (as happened in this period; Keay, p. 284).
That hesitation was certainly evident in the meetings of Whig leaders which took place in the early 1680s to try to figure out how to deal with the problem of York succeeding. They were anything but united in their goals and plans, but Monmouth was among the most pessimistic, saying that they needed to raise far more supporters, and much more money, than they had (Keay, pp. 290-291). They sometimes met at Richard Rumbold's fortified house in Rye (Brennan, p. 95). We don't really know the details of their discussions -- but clearly it was treasonous! At least one sub-group wanted to assassinate York -- and Charles II as well (Keay, p. 294).
When an informer told the court about the "Rye House Plot," Charles didn't really think Monmouth would assassinate him (Keay, p. 297, and Hutton, p. 422, say that he actually knew where Monmouth hid after the arrest warrants went out and didn't give him away) -- but he still told Monmouth's wife Anna, to whom he remained close, that Monmouth had to flee (Keay, p. 295). He also suppressed a play that satirized Monmouth (Hutton, p. 422).
In the trials that followed, several of Monmouth's friends, including Lord William Russell, were executed, and the Earl of Essex committed suicide so that his children and wife would not lose his inheritance (Keay, pp. 298-299; Hutton, p. 421; Brennan, pp. 96-98, says that twelve were executed apart from Essex. Most of them died in horrible ways -- seven, of low social rank, were drawn and quartered, a woman named Elizabeth Gaunt was burned at the stake, two were hanged, and two including Russell were beheaded. According to Brennan, p. 127, Gaunt was "a poor Anabaptist, who would be the last woman executed for the political crime of treason in England." One wonders how much her sectarianism contributed to her fate. She was burned on October 19, having supposedly kissed the wood that would be used to light the fire and declared that it did not matter whether she died by fire or in her bed).
Brennan, p. 128, thinks that Charles was right; Monmouth did not know about the assassination plot, but the plotters made sure that he was involved so he have to be on their side when the plot succeeded.
He made a formal submission to Charles and to York, and was formally pardoned (Miller, p. 116; Keay, pp. 310-311), but no one -- least of all York -- trusted him (Keay, p. 311), and he left England in 1684 (Miller, p. 116; Keay, pp. 316-319. According to Keay, he left his wife Anna behind -- Charles II was still fond of her -- but Henrietta Wentworth followed him). There were, of course, still attempts to get him back into English politics; surprising, at least according to Keay, p. 320, Monmouth rebuffed those attempts as long as his father was alive; he went to the court of William and Mary in the Netherlands and, surprisingly, seems to have brightened it (Keay, pp. 324-325); if Keay, p. 330, is to be believed, Monmouth would have been happy to just hang around Europe with Henrietta, seeking a military job and avoiding politics.
"Why Monmouth abandoned this comfort for the rigours of an uncertain military campaign was a question he later came to ponder, and neither he nor anyone else has answered it satisfactorily" (Kishlansky, p. 270).
It appears that Charles II was becoming open to a reconciliation with Monmouth around the end of 1864 (Keay, pp. 326-328; Hutton, p. 442, is not quite as sure that the letters supporting this idea are genuine). But, before anything came of that, Charles II died, after a short illness, on February 6, 1685, and York succeeded as James II. (Interestingly, James was at Charles's bedside, and Charles supposedly asked him to take care of two mistresses, the Duchess of Portsmouth and Nell Gwynn, and "his poor children" -- but not Monmouth; Miller, p. 119.) The great calamity had taken place: A Catholic was on the throne. Exclusion had failed.
I suspect that a large majority of the country would have preferred a Protestant. Unfortunately, there were three serious candidates to succeed instead of York -- Monmouth, York's daughter Mary, and William of Orange. I suspect, with less certainty, that Monmouth was the most popular of the three: He was popular, he was male, he was Charles's own son, he was purely English -- but while a lot of people wanted him on the throne, there was no organization behind it (Clifton, pp. 136-139). No one was ready to move.
Nonetheless a conspiracy arose around Monmouth. (Note that he did not instigate it!) Robert Ferguson, one of the Rye House plotters, worked on both Monmouth and the Earl of Argyll (Keay, pp. 330-333) -- though he didn't really get them to agree. In particular, the Earl of Argyll wanted to move before James could be crowned (Brennan, p. 109). That wasn't possible, but Argyll convinced Monmouth to move sooner than he wanted to -- there wasn't much time to gather money or weapons (Brennan, pp. 108-109; Kishlansky, p. 270, implies that the conspirators were too incompetent to have done any planning, which I think is right. And they pushed Monmouth to move too soon.).
Given the other exiles' lack of planning and fundraising, Keay, pp. 338-339, says Monmouth sold everything he had, some of it probably at steep discounts, to raise what money he could. It wasn't enough to mount much of an expedition, and it left him with no money at all to use in England. On May 2, 1685, Argyll left the Netherlands for Scotland with three ships carrying weapons; he was supposed to raise the Scots and distract the London government (Brennan, p. 110). Monmouth himself took four ships worth of arms to England four weeks later (Miller, p. 139), having with him apparently only about eighty followers (Magnusson, p. 501; Keay, p. 341, says 83; Brennan, p. 112 gives the number as 150, but perhaps this includes the ship's crews). The voyage took weeks longer than it should have (Keay, pp. 240-341), which made coordination with Argyll even worse. But Monmouth eventually arrived and started to gather a ragtag following -- Clifton, pp. 250-259, concludes on the basis of what amount to police records that an extremely large share of them were cloth workers affected by a decline in demand for cloth.
Argyll's rebellion was a complete fizzle; he raised his standard at Campbeltown on May 20, but could not attract any supporters, was captured (on June 18, according to Brennan, p. 111), tried to kill himself, failed, and was executed; his followers -- such as there were -- suffered the same fate (Magnusson, pp. 501-502; Clark, p. 115, says they "were treated with needless harshness"). Argyll had made just about every mistake a soldier could make, and kept making them even after his final defeat: Struggling away from his pursuers, effectively alone, he got into a fight with a drunk old man, who hit him over the head with a rusty sword and turned him over to James's forces (Keay, p. 352).
Monmouth, who came ashore on June 11, did a bit better. He landed at Lyme Regis in Dorset (Chandler, p. 19), and the south-west of England was apparently fertile ground (according to Miller, p. 140, many there had supported Monmouth during the Exclusion Crisis. Clifton, pp. 55-57, reports that Somerset was strongly anti-Catholic and had more dissenters per capita than almost anywhere else in the country; it was also heavily Whig and anti-absolutist-monarchy). Monmouth attracted followers -- but not particularly effective ones. It appears only one member of the nobility, Lord Grey, was in his camp (Chandler, p. 53), and few gentry or trained soldiers (Clark, p. 114); Keay, p. 347, says his army consisted of the "working poor," and their horses were mostly not suitable for use as cavalry mounts. Grey had come with Monmouth (Brennan, p. 112), so not one member of the nobility joined his army! (Clifton, p. 168, suggests that this was an ironic side-effect of Monmouth's moderation; he hadn't claimed the crown, meaning the nobility feared that James might stay on the throne and come after them -- though on pl 271 Clifton suggests that Monmouth's illegitimacy kept the nobility from supporting him.) Grey, after an officers' quarrel, became commander of Monmouth's cavalry, but Monmouth apparently wasn't impressed with him (Chandler, p. 21). Because Monmouth had brought so few men with him, the bulk of the army was local recruits (Brennan, p. 112; Clifton, pp. 160-167, describes how most of the town around Devon produced large contingents eager to fight against Catholicism). The infantry was organized into five regiments, named for colors (Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, White) -- but the troops had no experience and only a few skilled officers. Tough to build a strong army with nothing but peasants....
James had a lot to worry about when Monmouth landed: Monmouth himself, Argyll (who could have done much more harm if they had successfully cooperated; their failyr to coordinate cost them both dearly), and the possibility that William and Mary would join the fight, plus he had to worry about a spontaneous rising in London. And the regular army at this time had fewer than ten thousand troops, widely scattered (Miller, pp. 140-141); James could not immediately concentrate his forces. So James had his (highly unreliable) militia follow Monmouth but not fight him. James also appointed Louis Duras, Earl of Feversham, to command the loyal forces once they assembled (Chandler, p. 24; Keay, p. 353, notes the irony that Feversham, his #2 John Churchill the future Duke of Marlborough, and many others of the army officers had formerly served under Monmouth -- Churchill in fact had been at Monmouth's side when he fought his great fight at Maastricht, and another officer, Percy Kirke, was actually the brother of one of Monmouth's mistresses! But Feversham -- who wasn't even English -- owed everything to James and was impeccably loyal even if he didn't have Churchill's military gifts; Clifton, p. 171). But when Argyll's rebellion fizzled and William and Mary didn't move, James was able to move against Monmouth while still keeping London under control (Brennan, p. 114). The too-rapid invasion already had Monmouth in trouble.
Monmouth did not immediately proclaim himself king, choosing at first to refer only to James II's crimes (the flags he brought with him read ""For God, Freedom, and Religion"; Keay, p. 342). Keay, p. 347, claims that he didn't want to claim the throne -- but many people thought he was a republican, and didn't want to fight for that. Also, it was thought safe to fight for anyone who had been proclaimed King, under legislation going back to the Wars of the Roses. (Keay, p. 348. James of course ignored that precedent.) So when he reached Taunton, with some 4000 followers at his back, Monmouth made it official (Chandler, pp. 24-25; Brennan, pp. 114-115, who adds that Monmouth could no longer go back -- his ships had been taken by James's forces). The proclamation accused James II of poisoning Charles II while Monmouth was abroad and usurping the throne (quoted on p. 103 of Chandler. The charge is of course baseless; Charles didn't die of poison, and Monmouth was in exile because he had upset Charles and he couldn't risk staying in Britain -- plus he had no claim to the throne!). But apparently many believed Charles had been poisoned (Kishlansky, pp. 266-267), so it was good propaganda.
To prevent the confusion between the names of James II and James son of Charles II, he was informally called "King Monmouth" for the time being (Chandler, p. 25).
Monmouth's next objective was Bristol, which would have been a good source of recruits as well as supplies and the capture of which would be a significant psychological boost (Clifton, p. 169), but Feversham got there first (Chandler, pp. 28-29; Keay, p. 351; Clifton, p. 183). Monmouth, meanwhile, was having so much trouble arming his troops that he was organizing companies of men with scythes (Chandler, p. 29; Keay, p. 342, says that he had brought only about 1500 muskets); even those who had guns had mostly old weapons, and to make bullets, they had been forced to strip lead from the roof of Wells Cathedral (Brennan, p. 117)! And prisoners revealed that the regular army was present in force (Keay, p. 351). It was the worst possible news -- since he was getting no support from the nobility or gentry, he needed a success, and the failure to take Bristol meant he wouldn't get it. For practical purposes, he had lost -- and he knew it (Clifton, pp. 184-185).
His men won a minor skirmish at Norton St Philip, trapping the Royalist vanguard and inflicting heavy casualties (Keay, p, 354, who credits Monmouth with planning a good battle), but both sides broke off the fight fairly quickly (Chandler, pp. 34-37) and retreated; bad weather made a continued fight difficult, and Monmouth didn't have the cavalry to pursue (Clifton, pp. 188-189). What's more, he had lost four of his few officers, one of them to friendly fire, which shows how bad his troops were (Clifton, p. 190)
In an extremely odd little coincidence, the Royalist commander who walked into the trap was the Duke of Grafton, another bastard of Charles II -- in other words, Monmouth's half-brother! (Clifton, p. 187)
Monmouth, seemingly both before and after this battle, was already getting cold feet, wanting to give up and head back overseas (Chandler, p. 38. Brennan, pp. 112-113, 116, suggests that this was when he heard of Argyll's failure and death; the two had no direct communication, so he had had no idea how Argyll was doing except what he learned from locals in England. Keay, pp. 355-356, has a suggestion that reflects better on him: Realizing that his men were simply not ready to face James's army, and that they were almost sure to be defeated, he wanted to disband his army so that his men could take advantage of an offer from James that any man who would rejoin the royalist side within eight days would be pardoned. Clifton, p. 190, mentions that Monmouth was aware that he simply didn't have the junior officers he needed to train or manage an efficient army). He was talked out of it -- to his own misfortune -- but it's another indication of his fragile emotional state.
According to Clifton, pp. 195-196, the forlorn-hope of an idea was to head for the northwest -- Cheshire, perhaps -- where there might be a chance to recruit more troops. But it was a forlorn hope, given his inexperienced troops and the long distance to be covered. So when it appeared there might be another chance to surprise the Royalists, Monmouth took it.
Monmouth was already out of money (according to Keay, p. 337, the people who were expected to fund the expedition had hemmed and hawed and done nothing); the men were not being paid, and had started to slip away. The contest had hardly even started, and the rebellion was already failing! (Chandler, p. 39). Monmouth needed to accomplish something to restart his campaign. Hence the battle of Sedgemoor, in Somerset. (The official name for the battle site, according to Chandler, p. 104 n. 1, was "Langmoor," but the general area was known as King's Sedgemoor, and the battle was named after that.) Monmouth's forces arrived at Bridgwater, Somerset, where they made at least a pretense of fortifying (Chandler, p. 43; Keay, pp. 356-357 seems to think the goal was to prevent the Royalist army from attacking right away and give Monmouth more time to come up with... some alternative; Clifton, p. 195, thinks he was trying to cover the move northwest). There was no time to finish; James's army under the Earl of Feversham came up so quickly that Monmouth's defenses, even if he meant to use them, were incomplete (Chandler, p. 44).
There are different estimates for the sizes of the armies:
* Chandler, p. 45, says James's army had perhaps 1500 infantry and 1000 cavalry and dragoons; on pp. 70-71, Chandler gives the precise total of 2850 and 26 guns. P. 54, estimates that Monmouth had 2500 infantry and 600 horse but p. 71 gives the exact number of 3610: 5 infantry regiments, 600 cavalry, 4 guns
* Miller, p. 142, and Clifton, p. 203 suggests the royal army had 2000 infantry and 800 horse of all types (which Clifton says is 100-200 less than Monmouth's forces)
* Brennan, p. 118, estimates that the royal army had 3000 men and Monmouth had 4000
Although it was near Bridgwater, the royal army didn't seem to be fortifying its camp (Chandler, p. 47). Monmouth and his advisors, not wanting to be besieged, decided on a night attack; they set out at 11:00 p.m. to try to take the enemy in the least defensible part of their camp (Chandler, pp. 47-48), which was located at a place with the improbable name of "Westonzoyland." (A name so peculiar that Brennan, p. 116, misspells it "Westernzoyland,") Clifton, pp. 204, 222, thinks it was a good plan -- but it required a six mile night march along a complex path to avoid detection (Chandler, p. 56). The guide got slightly lost, leaving the army standing while he tried to find his way; during that time, a shot was fired, and surprise was lost (Chandler, pp. 58-61; Keay, p. 360). Monmouth had to redirect his forces: "This change was the best that could be improvised, but Monmouth put an intolerable strain on the training of his army, and things began to go wrong" (Clifton, p. 208). It got worse from there: Monmouth's inexperienced cavalry, led by the incompetent Grey (Keay, pp. 360-361), quickly fell to pieces and fled, disordering his leading infantry regiments and causing his ammunition wagons to halt (Chandler, p. 63), meaning his handful of cannon were soon out of service. He never got his forces back in order, and Churchill soon realigned James's forces to meet the threat. Quickly realizing that all was lost, Monmouth abandoned his troops and tried to save himself (Chandler, p. 67). Eventually Feversham was able to order a counter-attack, which easily succeeded (Chandler, pp. 68-69).
"On 5th July [Monmouth] attempted a night attack on Feversham's forces at Sedgemoor. Despite the advantage of surprise, the attack was bungled. Once Feversham's regular troops rallied themselves, Monmouth's ill-trained, ill-armed followers stood little chance. Most fled, except for 'some particular obstinate scythemen and clubmen, most of whom died for it, as all did, until the soldiers wearied of killing'" (Miller, p. 141).
"When on 5 July the army of Monmouth, swollen to 6000 men, faced Feversham's troops on the plain of Sedgmoor, the battle that followed soon turned into a rout. Monmouth's army of untrained, half-armed peasants had attacked the Royalist troops at midnight, and for a moment this surprise assault seemed likely to be successful. But Feversham's troops under the able command of the rising young John Churchill [the future Duke of Marlborough] were too much for them, and by sunrise they were running for their lives.
"The fighting was over; the terror was yet to come" (Clifton, p. 224).
More than 1500 bodies were left behind on the bloody plain" (van der Zee, p. 194). The bodies on the field were not all battle casualties. On p. 73 Chandler estimates that only 400 of Monmouth's troops were actually killed in the battle, with another thousand killed after the battle ended. Keay, p. 363, believes fewer than 200 were killed in the battle but a thousand died in the pursuit. Brennan, p. 118, says 1300 of Monmouth's men were dead compared to just 200 royal losses.
According to Brennan, p. 118, it had taken less than two hours. Chandler, p. xi, points out that Sedgemoor was the last pitched battle (which he defines as one with more than two dozen casualties, thus excluding the 1745 Battle of Clifton) fought on English (as opposed to Irish or Scottish) soil. On p. 71, he lists the Royal army as having about 80 killed and 220 wounded, while the rebels had 1000 killed and 500 taken prisoner, many of them wounded. Clifton, p. 224, cites an accounting that found 1384 corpses, with some not yet found.
Monmouth and his other officers fled. At first Monmouth and Grey stayed together, hoping to flee the country. They later separated. Grey was taken first -- and promptly told his captors where to look for Monmouth (Keay, pp. 364-365. Note that Grey had helped get Monmouth into this mess, had cost him any chance at Sedgemoor, and then betrayed him. Nice guy).
"It was the end of the road for Monmouth. A day later [i.e. July 8] he was discovered hiding in a ditch, betrayed -- according to legend -- by the faithfulness of one of his dogs, who having lost his master followed his scent. Monmouth was in a state of nervous collapse, trembling and crying, and said later that he had never enjoyed a night's rest nor eaten a meal in quiet since the day of his landing" (van der Zee, p. 194). Miller, p. 141, says he was disguised as a shepherd, and Brennan, p. 119, says he was "wearing provincial clothing." According to Chandler, pp. 76-77, the tree at the site came to be known as "Monmouth's Ash." (A bad choice of tree, perhaps, given that Monmouth's father had once managed to hide from the forces of the Commonwealth in a "Royal Oak.") So stressful had the last few weeks been that, according to Keay, p. 366, the stubble of his beard had come in mostly white, even though he was only 36 years old. (Although we might note that both his father and his grandfather had gone prematurely gray, according to Fraser, p. 183, so maybe that's evidence that he was truly Charles II's son.)
He appealed desperately to James, without result -- James did see him, but Brennan suggests "The meeting was probably primarily agreed so that James could give the duke is sentence in person. It is also not unreasonable to assume that the king would have wanted to gloat to his nephew that he was the victor, or even see his nephew beg for mercy, just for pleasure; James II was a vain, petty, frivolous, mean man and such behavior would not have been beneath him." There was no proper trial; Monmouth had already been attainted (Miller, p. 141; Brennan, pp. 119-120; Keay, p. 346, says it was passed the day word came to London that Monmouth had landed), so James's minions could execute him at their leisure. He was allowed a brief meeting with his wife and children (Brennan, p. 121).
One of those attending his death was Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, the author of what we now usually call "The Doxology" ("Praise God from whom all blessings flow"; see the notes to "Old Hundred.") It was here that he declared that his relationship to Henrietta Wentworth should be regarded as a marriage (Brennan, p. 122-123; according to Keay, pp. 370-371, he argued that his marriage to Anna Scott had been a political one when they were minors and so was not truly binding. The clergy argued; Monmouth was so convinced of his opinion that, when the ministers threatened to refuse him a final communion if he would not back down, he would not relent; Keay, pp. 370-371). He did declare that his actual wife had no part in his rebellion (Keay, p. 369), and that he was not and never had been the true king (Keay, p. 370). When Anna Scott showed up, he apologized enough that she broke down (Keay, p. 371).
Fortunately, his exoneration of Anna were sufficient that she was allowed to keep the properties that were hers by inheritance, though naturally the Dukedom of Monmouth went by the boards. She married Baron Cornwallis in 1688, and lived until the reign of George I (Keay, p. 384).
On the scaffold he declared "I come to die. I die as a Protestant of the Church of England" (Keay, p. 372), indirectly maintaining his justification for invasion. He again maintained the propriety of his relationship to Henrietta, but gave the bishops a statement explicitly declaring that his parents were not married. He apologized for the invasion and forgave his enemies without mentioning James II (Keay, pp. 372-373). He had done enough to save his children; he would do no more.
Monmouth was beheaded on July 15. It took the headsman -- the infamously incompetent Jack Ketch -- five blows (van der Zee, p. 195; Brennan, p. 123; Keay, pp. 374-375).
Eventually there were claims that he was spared -- one account even says that he was the Man in the Iron Mask (Brennan, p. 127). This is absurd; it assumes that James II was capable of mercy when his own position was at stake. He wasn't.
The ordinary prisoners were held without food or medical treatment, causing some to die of wounds or illness (Brennan, p. 125), and many who had given themselves up were executed without trial. One of James's regimental commanders, Colonel Piercy Kirke, was so brutal that he was said to have "accepted the offered favours of an inn-keeper's daughter at Crewkerne in return for the life of her father; but when next morning she went to the window it was to see his corpse dangling from the inn-sign" (Chandler, p. 74).
The war crimes didn't stop in the immediate aftermath of the battle; there were still judicial murders to be committed -- the so-called "Bloody Assizes" (Miller, p. 141). George Jeffreys, First Baron Jeffreys, became known as the "Hanging Judge" because of the severity of the sentences he handed down; his name is still remembered today. He had earlier been one of those who prosecuted the Rye House plotters. Loyal to James II to the end, Jeffreys was in prison in 1689 when he died; it was reportedly due to illness (he had been suffering some disease -- Chandler, p. 85, says kidney stones, the pain of which made him into a "hectoring bully" -- for some years), but he probably would have been in deep trouble with the new regime had he lived. (Chandler, p. 83, says that we need to balance traditional images of him as "ogre" or "misunderstood," but even Chandler's "balanced" description would file under "ogre" in my book!)
"Lady Lisle" was one of his victims; apparently her only crime was helping fugitives from Sedgemoor (and, perhaps, having been married to a Republican MP, John Lyle; Brennan, p. 126), but Kirke arrested her and Jeffreys had her beheaded. Chandler, pp. 84, reports, "The first major case was the most notorious of all (and the best recorded) -- that of Dame Alice Lisle on 27 August. Charged with harbouring two rebels, John Hickes and Richard Nelthorpe, she was a widow of over eighty, and had scant sympathy for the cause of Monmouth; of the former, she believed him to be only a dissenting minister; of the latter she knew nothing at all. Jeffreys produced an appalling virtuoso performance from the Judge's Bench, and bullied and confused witnesses until after a six-hour trial he extracted the verdict he wanted from an unwilling jury, even though Hickes had not been proved to be a rebel. 'Had she been my own mother, I would have found her guilty,' he commented to the cowed jury, before sentencing Dame Alice to be burnt at the stake, the penalty for women convicted of high treason. A five-day postponement of execution was eventually agreed, and the King was persuaded to substitute a sentence of beheading with the axe. She died at Winchester on 2 September, it was noted in Hansard's second volume of State Trials 'with a great deal of Christian resolution'. Another eyewitness recorded that 'she was old and dozy and died without much concern'." Her age is apparently uncertain; Brennan, p. 127, gives it as 71, and Clifton, p. 233, as 70, but most seem to agree that she was not of entirely sound mind.
Clifton, p. 233, notes the further fact that Hickes was not yet a convicted rebel, so how could Lisle be accused of harboring a known rebel?
The Rebel in this song was absolutely right to fear that Jeffreys would do injustice again. Having dealt with Lisle, there was none of this shilly-shallying with six-hour trials for one defendant; he tried the accused in batches, usually in less than three hours per batch, pushing people to plead guilty to get a reduced sentence and then giving them the death penalty anyway (Chandler, pp. 86-87; Clifton, pp. 236-240). Chandler, p. 88, calculates that 333 people were sentenced to death and 814 to transportation in thirty days across multiple cities. Clark comes in with lesser figures, but even he thinks about 150 were killed and 800 transported. The number sentenced to death was initially higher, but transportees were worth money, so James decided to sell off most of the convicted rather than wasting money killing them (Clifton, p. 238, who adds on p. 241 that the transportees were given ten year sentences rather than the usual five). There were still enough people killed to force almost every town to acquire equipment to execute the victims and then tar their bodies to preserve them -- not a cheap thing to do (Clifton, 239). It was not justice; it was a Bolshevik-style purge. According to Keay, p. 378, more than 90% of those charged were either executed or deported; less than 10% were pardoned. The number of executions ordered was so high that Jack Ketch complained it was impossible to perform them in the time allotted.
"In the weeks after Sedgemoor, luckless peasants were summarily and brutally killed, notably by the fearsome Colonel Kirke. Soon after, the judges, headed by Jeffreys, arrived on the western circuit. Jeffreys's temper was not improved by is being 'tortured by the stone', but he was always ferociously hostile to any form of dissent. Most seventeenth-century judges thought it necessary to secure convictions wherever possible in treason trials, for the security of the state. Even so, Jeffreys and his colleagues stretched the law of treason even more than usual and Jeffreys's verbal violence was exceptional even by the robust standards of his day. Nobody knows how many were executed for their alleged complicity in the rebellion, but it is unlikely to have been much less than three hundred" (Miller, p. 141).
It is a sad commentary on the times that the secondary leaders of the rebellion tended to come off better then their followers. Although both Monmouth and Argyle were executed, several of Monmouth's regimental commanders either succeeded in fleeing Britain or managed to turn enough states' evidence to buy a pardon (Chandler, pp. 79-80). Lord Grey, for instance, was able to buy a pardon, though it cost him £40,000 (Chandler, p. 88), plus he had to inform on others (Brennan, p. 126). Some of the fines were actually paid over to Jeffreys, and how can there be justice that way?
Some accounts say that Daniel Foe, who later wrote under the name "Daniel Defoe," was one of those who supported Monmouth but escaped punishment (Brennan, p. 125; according to Clifton, p. 274, Defoe hinted at this in his own writings). But Defoe's life story is very obscure; many scholars doubt this.
All of this was fine with the King: "While Jeffreys was on his 'campaign' (James's word), he informed James fully of what he was doing and, when he returned, James made him Lord Chancellor" (Miller, p. 142; cf. Chandler, p. 87. Lord Chancellor at this time was still one of the highest offices of state). Clifton, p. 236, thinks that Jeffreys hurried the trials because he expected the old Chancellor to die and wanted the job. It wouldn't do him much good; he was shoved aside in the Glorious Revolution and died, probably of his kidney disease, in the Tower in 1689 (OxfordCompanion, p. 530).
The reign of terror instituted by Jeffreys was so extreme that it resulted in the publication (in 1689) of a book called The Western Martyrology, which was a sort of non-conformist tribute to his victims (Clifton, p. 273) -- but this was largely the work of that pathological liar Titus Oates and is not at all trustworthy (Clifton, p. 268).
James II "won" at Sedgemoor, but it wasn't much of a success. Like all the Stuarts, he had an over-inflated opinion of the rights of the monarchy -- and also of his own capacity. He was overthrown by the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689, succeeded by his daughter Mary II and her husband (and James's nephew) William III. Keay, p. 381, suggests that Monmouth's failure actually helped, indirectly, with James's overthrow: William III learned that he couldn't just hope for a spontaneous rising to overthrow James. The invaders would need to come with a plan and with sufficient force to pull it off. (A lesson, we might note, that James's son the Old Pretender and his grandson Bonnie Prince Charlie were unable to learn. It is a further irony that Scotland was the wellspring of Jacobitism; the Scots had actually suffered more than the English from Stuart religious policies -- but they hadn't been consulted in James's overthrow, and so some of them clung to the Jacobite cause despite the prior oppression,)
With James gone, you'd think the followers of Monmouth would have been more acceptable, and indeed William and Mary offered pardons for those who had been sent to the West Indies. But it was hard for them to come back; apart from the many who died of tropical diseases, many found it hard to get away from their masters even though they were officially pardoned (Chandler, p. 89); after some arguments with the earlier colonists, William declared that the transportees were free but needed the governor's permission to leave the colony, so there was no "right of return" (Clifton, pp. 242-243). Many who did escape went to North America rather than returning to England.
Althouth there are few traditional songs about Monmouth, he certainly did attract other compositions. Broadside Bodleian Ashm. G 5(102) is "Monmouth's Return, or The Mistaken Whiggs" (C. Corbet London, 1683; with music). Bodleian Vet. A3 c.29(14) is "The down-fall of the Whiggs: or The duke of Monmouths journey into the North" (Thomas Johnson, London, 1682). Bodleian Ashm. G 5(92) is "Monmouth and Bucleugh's welcom from the North: or The loyal Protestants joy for his happy return" (Thomas Johnson, London, 1682). Bodleian Firth c.23(25) is "Rebellion rewarded with justice. Or The last farewell of the late duke of Monmouth" (J. Deacon, London, 1685?). Bodleian Firth c.23(71) is "Monmouth routed. Together, with his promise and resolution to return again" (unknown, n.d.). Bodleian Firth c.15(34)=Wood 417(140) is "Monmouth degraded or James Scot, the little King in Lyme. A song" (James Dean, London, 1685). Bodleian Firth c.15(35) is "Monmouth routed, and taken prisoner, with his pimp the lord Gray. A song" (James Dean, London, 1685). Bodleian Wood E 25(116) is "Monmouth worsted in the west: or, His care and grief for the death of his poor souldiers" (H. G., London, 1688? -- I have to suspect this was printed in 1685, then perhaps reprinted when William III invaded).
There are also literary works. In addition to "Absalom and Achitophel," he is a major character in Aphra Behn's 1684-1688 Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister; like "Absalom and Achitophel," it allegorizes, or at least conceals, Monmouth's name (Brennan, p. 132). On p. 133, Brennan lists other works with a "Monmouthian" setting, the most famous probably being R. D. Blackmore's 1869 romance Lorna Doone. But it isn't really about Monmouth' that's just the background, and I suspect this is true of most of the other books Brennan lists. - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 6.6
File: BrHa075

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2024 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.