ExecutedToday.com » 1685: James Scott, Duke of Monmouth 1685: James Scott, Duke of Monmouth July 15th, 2008 Headsman On this date in 1685, the haughty Duke of Monmouth mounted the scaffold at London’s Tower Hill to suffer beheading for treason, and tipped the headsman with the words, “Here are six guineas for you and do not hack me as you did my Lord Russell . I have heard you struck him four or five times; If you strike me twice, I cannot promise you not to stir.”* Upon this tart public reminder of his recent and infamous failure of craft, the eponymous executioner Jack Ketch quite came apart. Monmouth, certainly, would have appreciated the advance that would bring the guillotine . Beheading by a free-swinging axe was a ghoulishly inexact procedure : bad aim, insufficient force, an untimely flinch, or the tough neck muscles of a grizzled campaigner regularly complicated the process.

Jack Ketch is sometimes reported a sadist, and sometimes a professional hangman so rarely summoned to give a nobleman the chop that he simply lacked proficiency. Either way, he’d been on the job for a generation by this time: his reputation for infelicity with the blade preceded him. Historical fiction from the perspective of the Duke of Monmouth. Monmouth , an illegitimate son of King Charles II, had cause to dread Ketch’s offices for the rebellious culmination of a long power struggle with his uncle, the future King James II. The personal contest between these men for the throne of England was the echo of the decades-old struggles straining the English polity — the Reformation and the reach of royal authority . As it became known that the king’s brother James had gone from Catholic sympathizer to Catholic convert, Protestants began maneuvering to keep him from inheriting the crown. For three years, Parliament pushed the Exclusion Bill , which would have excluded James from succession.** Favor among the bill’s supporters settled on the Protestant playboy Monmouth — politically convenient rumors that he was actually a legitimate child began circulating.

“Weak, bad, and beautiful,” this unfriendly-to-Monmouth free book has him; whatever he was, his allies in the House of Commons were handily outmaneuvered. The Exclusion measures failed, and in 1685, James II began his reign as England’s last Roman Catholic monarch. Monmouth’s hopes had been raised, however, and he proceeded to invade England at Dorset with a somewhat ragtag army that was routed by the Protestant royal troops who remained loyal to James at the Battle of Sedgemoor — not quite the last battle fought on English soil, but the last consequential one (the last fought with pitchforks makes a livelier distinction). Monmouth was caught trying to get away in a shepherd’s disguise . Other fugitives of his cause were hunted mercilessly . The defeated duke was reputedly not above begging the sovereign for his life; obviously, that didn’t work out. But his cause was a popular one, nearing reverence among some commoners. Jack Ketch may have had a case of the butterflies even before the duke undressed him … and as it turns out, Ketch almost left the scaffold worse than his victim.

Here is the scene in Macaulay’s words : The hangman addressed himself to his office. But he had been disconcerted by what the Duke had said. The first blow inflicted only a slight wound. The Duke struggled, rose from the block, and looked reproachfully at the executioner. The head sank down once more. The stroke was repeated again and again; but still the neck was not severed, and the body continued to move. Yells of rage and horror rose from the crowd. Ketch flung down the axe with a curse. ‘I cannot do it,’ he said; ‘my heart fails me.’ ‘Take up the axe, man,’ cried the sheriff. ‘Fling him over the rails,’ roared the mob. At length the axe was taken up. Two more blows extinguished the last remains of life; but a knife was used to separate the head from the shoulders. The crowd was wrought up to such an ecstasy of rage that the executioner was in danger of being torn in pieces, and was conveyed away under a strong guard.

In the meantime many handkerchiefs were dipped in the Duke’s blood; for, by a large part of the multitude he was regarded as a martyr who had died for the Protestant religion. Just the sort of soil for posthumous tall tales — that his execution was bogus and he was in hiding to return again, or had been packed off to France to become the Man in the Iron Mask . One possibly better-founded legend is that his head was set back upon its stump to sit him for what must have been a pungent portrait . Protestant opponents of James were much thicker on the ground than the Duke’s own person, of course. They soon succeeded where Monmouth had failed. * Slightly different versions of this address from the Duke to the executioner are recorded. Macaulay omits the “if you strike me twice” clause but adds “My servant will give you some more gold if you do the work well”; a more polite (barely) construction suggests “Do not serve me as you did my Lord Russell.” ** The factions in this dispute — the “Petitioners” (supporting the bill) and the “Abhorrers” (supporting the king) — evolved into the Whig and Tory political parties.

Duke of Monmouth | Article about Duke of Monmouth by The Free Dictionary Duke of Monmouth | Article about Duke of Monmouth by The Free Dictionary Monmouth, James Scott, duke of (redirected from Duke of Monmouth) Also found in: Wikipedia . Monmouth, James Scott, duke of (mŏn`məth), 1649–85, pretender to the English throne; illegitimate son of Charles II of England by Lucy Walter Walter, Lucy, 1630?–1658, mistress (1648–50) of Charles II of England during his exile in Holland and France. She was the mother by him of James Scott, duke of Monmouth, whom the Whigs supported as heir to the throne in their attempt to exclude James, duke of York ..... Click the link for more information. . After his mother's death, he was cared for by Lord Crofts, by whose name the boy was known. In 1662, James went to live at Charles's court.

Charles acknowledged him as his son, created him (1663) duke of Monmouth, and married him to Anne Scott, countess of Buccleuch, whose name James now adopted. He held military commands on the Continent (1672–74), became captain general in 1678, and defeated the Scottish Covenanters at Bothwell Bridge in 1679. Politically he became very important after feeling against the succession of the Roman Catholic duke of York (later James II James II, 1633–1701, king of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1685–88); second son of Charles I, brother and successor of Charles II. Early Life ..... Click the link for more information. ) was heightened at the time of the Popish Plot agitation in 1678. The 1st earl of Shaftesbury Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st earl of, 1621–83, English statesman. In the English civil war he supported the crown until 1644 but then joined the parliamentarians. ..... Click the link for more information.

and other supporters of a Protestant succession championed Monmouth as heir to Charles and tried in vain to get Charles to prove his son legitimate. In 1679, Charles sent both Monmouth and the duke of York into exile. When Monmouth returned without the king's permission, he was forbidden to come to court but was received enthusiastically in London and the western counties. Monmouth worked with Shaftesbury and the Whig party for the exclusion of James from the succession, and after the arrest of Shaftesbury for treason in 1681 he was heard to speak openly of rebellion. When the Rye House Plot Rye House Plot, 1683, conspiracy to assassinate Charles II of England and his brother James, duke of York (later James II), as they passed by Rumbold's Rye House in Hertfordshire on the road from Newmarket to London. ..... Click the link for more information. was discovered (1683) and some of the Whig leaders were arrested, Monmouth fled to Holland. James II succeeded Charles in Feb., 1685. In June, Monmouth landed at Lyme Regis, Dorset, and raised a small force.

At Taunton he was proclaimed king, and for a short time his chances for success looked very promising. But the gentry failed to come to his support, and his army was routed at Sedgemoor by James's troops, led by John Churchill (later duke of Marlborough). Monmouth was captured and beheaded in London on July 15. Write what you mean clearly and correctly. References in classic literature ? We were prevented from any further discourse at present by the arrival of the apothecary; who, with much joy in his countenance, and without even asking his patient how he did, proclaimed there was great news arrived in a letter to himself, which he said would shortly be public, `That the Duke of Monmouth was landed in the west with a vast army of Dutch; and that another vast fleet hovered over the coast of Norfolk, and was to make a descent there, in order to favour the duke's enterprize with a diversion on that side.

But all had not the sense to foresee this at first; and therefore the Duke of Monmouth was weakly supported; yet all could feel when the evil came upon them; and therefore all united, at last, to drive out that king, against whose exclusion a great party among us had so warmly contended during the reign of his brother, and for whom they now fought with such zeal and affection. Warfare History Network » The Duke of Monmouth vs. King James II The Duke of Monmouth vs. King James II The Duke of Monmouth vs. King James II • August 8, 2014 The fate of the Protestant rebellion to unseat Catholic King James II in the blanace when the Duke of Monmouth's rebels launched a night attack across the English moors. by William Welsh The Duke of Monmouth’s rebel army marched briskly out of Bridgwater into the dark of night on July 6, 1685. Earlier that day, rebel scouts reported seeing troops of King James II’s army, camped a short distance away at Westonzoyland, stumbling about drunkenly with little regard for military demeanor or security.

Feeling cornered by the king’s troops, Monmouth believed that the last chance for his Protestant rebellion to succeed lay in launching an audacious night attack on the poorly guarded royal encampment. Gain new insight into the battle that brought the end of Napoleon’s rule in France. Get your copy of Warfare History Network’s FREE Special Report, The Battle of Waterloo Led by a local guide, the rebels planned to march five miles in a wide-ranging arc and fall on the rear of the royalist army. A seasoned commander, Monmouth sent word through the ranks that any man who made a sound alerting the enemy to their approach would be struck down immediately by his comrades. Cloaked in darkness and enshrouded by a thick mist that clung to the moors like moss to a rock, the rebels tramped off to meet their destiny. Inheriting the Throne James II had inherited the throne upon the death of his brother, Charles II, who had died exactly five months earlier, on February 6, 1685. Because Charles’s wife, Catherine of Braganza, had been barren, Charles left behind no legitimate heirs.

Both his brother, James, Duke of York, and his son James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, the eldest of Charles’s illegitimate children, had jockeyed for the throne in the years immediately preceding the king’s death. Although Charles bestowed numerous titles and honors on his eldest son, he supported his Catholic brother as his rightful successor. The opposition to James, which consisted of religious nonconformists who recognized neither the Roman Catholic Church nor the Church of England, saw in Monmouth a Protestant alternative to James and championed him as the true successor to the throne. James Scott, who took his surname from his wife Anna Scott, Countess of Buccleuch, was living at the time of Charles’s death in the United Provinces (Holland) with his mistress, Henrietta Wentworth. He held a number of titles as a result of his marriage and his father’s generosity, the highest of which was Duke of Monmouth. His popularity in England had reached such a point in the years preceding his father’s death that Charles had requested that he leave the country temporarily—if not for good. The Duke of Monmouth’s Military Qualifications Monmouth’s military qualifications were impressive.

In earlier days when he enjoyed his father’s favor, he had served as an apprentice to his Uncle James, who then held the position of Lord Admiral. Not long after Charles and France’s King Louis XIV entered into a secret pact in June 1670, Monmouth moved to the Continent, where he was given command of the 6,000-man English expeditionary force. When Charles later joined an alliance with the Dutch against the French, Monmouth was given command of the Anglo-Dutch brigade and subsequently distinguished himself at the Battle of St. Denis, in the waning days of the Franco-Dutch War. He later helped quash the so-called Covenanter Rebellion in 1679. After his uncle ascended the throne in 1685, Monmouth seemed content to pursue a leisurely life in exile. Not sharing his contentment, however, was a vocal band of exiled Protestant Englishmen and Scotsmen who hungered to see the new Catholic king overthrown. The malcontents held a meeting in Rotterdam in April 1685 to decide what course of action to take. A leading proponent of forceful overthrow was Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyle.

King James, when he was still the Duke of York, had driven Argyle into exile on rather weak grounds in the wake of the Covenanter Rebellion. Other conspirators fell into several categories, including former Cromwellian officers, dissident English officers serving with the Dutch, and religious noncomformists from the West Country. All assured Monmouth that he would receive immediate support from London, the West Country, and Cheshire. His supporters told him that 10,000 troops could be expected in London alone. Letting his pride and ambition outrun his common sense, Monmouth fell in with the plotters. Planning the Rebel Landings The Dutch monarch, William, Prince of Orange, turned a blind eye to the rebels plotting in Rotterdam. He was married to Mary, James’s eldest daughter, and therefore was James II’s son-in-law as well as his cousin. By plotting in William’s backyard, Monmouth and his band were placing the Dutch ruler in an awkward position. When James made a strong request that his son-in-law halt the purchase of arms and stores for the expedition, William pretended to issue orders to prevent such sales, but in fact did little or nothing to interfere with the plot.

The rebels planned two separate landings. Argyle would sail to the western highlands of Scotland, where he would raise troops to support the rebellion, while Monmouth would land in Dorset, in southwestern England. Once he landed, Monmouth planned to march to Bristol and recruit supporters from towns and villages along the way. As the second wealthiest city in England, Bristol would provide a solid base from which Monmouth could receive arms and supplies from the Continent and transfer recruits by sea from Scotland and Cheshire. Hardships Raising the War Chest Argyle raised £9,000 from estates he owned in Friesland and purchased three ships to carry him and a small group of men to Scotland. He sailed on May 2, but financial difficulties and bad weather conspired to keep Monmouth stranded in the United Provinces for most of the month. When Monmouth sent a request to his supporters in London asking them to forward him £6,000 for his expedition, they replied that they could not raise such a sum without risking the king’s wrath. They warned Monmouth that the timing was not right for a rebellion. Failing to heed their advice, Monmouth implored his Dutch supporters to provide funds to finance his expedition.

They provided him with £3,000—less than half of what he needed to purchase the necessary transport and arms. Undeterred, Monmouth and his mistress pawned their jewels to raise an additional £4,000. With the money they had raised, Monmouth leased the Helderenberg, a fifth-rate Dutch frigate with 32 guns, to oppose any of the king’s warships that might contest his cross-Channel passage. He also purchased two fishing vessels to haul equipment and gunpowder, including four light guns and 1,500 cavalry breastplates. A detachment of Dutch gunners signed on with the expedition to work the four-gun field battery. The duke’s tiny invasion force, which numbered fewer than 100 men, boarded the vessels on May 24, but it would be another week before the weather permitted them to leave the sanctuary of the Texel River for the open seas. Dorset Chosen for the Main Landing Bevil Skelton, the English envoy in Holland, tracked the progress of the rebel preparations for James II. He advised the king that the main landing would occur in Dorset and that a diversionary landing would take place in either Ireland or Scotland.

The king immediately issued orders to crush any seditious actions and prepared to repel the invaders. He sent a terse message to the far corners of the realm, ordering local officials to round up all suspected rebel leaders. On June 1, Helderenberg sailed into open waters bound for the Dorset coast, 400 miles away. Heavy winds buffeted the ships as they sailed across the English Channel toward their destination. Because of the blustery weather, it took Monmouth’s ships 10 days to make the crossing. By some miracle, the rebel fleet failed to encounter one of at least a dozen heavily armed English warships patrolling in the area. A few hours after sunrise on June 11, a messenger informed Gregory Alford, the mayor of Lyme Regis, that three suspicious vessels showing no flags had been spotted heading toward the town. “Fear Nothing but God” The mayor, who had been in the midst of a summer game of bowls atop the cliffs, hurried off dispatches to the Duke of Albermarle in Exeter and James II in London. Helderenberg’s crew launched seven small boats at sunset that carried the first wave of invaders onto the beach.

The duke knelt and prayed on the beach and then marched into town under a green-and-gold standard that bore the words “Fear Nothing but God.” Monmouth spent the following day putting the finishing touches on a proclamation in which he declared himself to be the legitimate son of Charles II and branded James a usurper to the throne. While the duke labored over the legally questionable document, his men unloaded the artillery, gunpowder, and supplies to make the declaration a fait accompli. Although England as a whole was not ready to revolt against James, the West Country was a wise choice for the landing. At the time of the invasion, the region served as England’s major industrial area. It was populated by a large number of miners, textile workers, and tradesmen who were suffering from the adverse effects of an economic recession. These men, together with struggling freehold farmers, would swell the ranks of Monmouth’s army in the days following his landing. The rebel duke raised 800 men on the first day alone and nearly doubled that number on the second day of the invasion. The first rebel recruits from the counties of Dorset and Devon were mustered into Red and Green Regiments led by Colonels Samuel Venner and Abraham Holmes, respectively.

During his advance inland, the duke would add three more regiments—White, Yellow, and Blue—to his invasion force. Dawn on the second day brought no word from either Cheshire or Scotland. What it did bring was news that the militias of Dorset and Somerset were remaining loyal to the crown and mustering to oppose the duke. The next day, Monmouth instructed Venner to take 400 foot soldiers and 40 horsemen and launch a preemptive attack on the 1,300-strong Dorset militia in Bridgport. The attack failed. Venner was wounded in the encounter, and Lord Grey, the Earl of Warke, could not control the untrained rebel cavalry, which fled as soon as the firing began. Disaster seemed in the making, but Colonel Nathaniel Wade, the son of a Cromwellian officer, took command of the situation and conducted a disciplined withdrawal back to Lyme Regis. On the basis of his performance, Monmouth put Wade in command of the Red Regiment. To suppress the rebellion, James II had at his disposal a small, well-trained army of 3,000 professional soldiers that he had inherited from his brother.

When awakened from a deep slumber at 4 am on June 13 and informed that the rebels had landed in Dorset, the king immediately began issuing orders to mobilize his forces to suppress the rebellion and capture Monmouth. One such order went to Maj. Gen. John Churchill, later to become the Duke of Marlborough, to take four troops from the Earl of Oxford’s Regiment of Horse (nicknamed the Blues), two companies of Royal Dragoons, and five companies of Colonel Piercy Kirke’s Regiment of Foot and march to Dorset. Altogether, Churchill’s force totaled about 400 cavalry and dragoons and 300 infantry. He was instructed to shadow the rebel army as it marched but not to bring on a general engagement until he was reinforced. Monmouth’s Army Moving North Another order was sent to ordnance specialists at the Tower of London, instructing them to prepare a 16-gun artillery train with heavy guns for duty in the West Country. Similarly, the king ordered a smaller, 10-gun artillery train assembled at Portsmouth and sent to the royal army in the field.

When James appealed to his supporters in Parliament to condemn Monmouth, they dutifully charged the duke with being a criminal and approved substantial funds to stamp out the rebellion. the Duke of Monmouth marched his army, which now numbered about 3,000 untrained recruits, north toward Taunton on June 15. Churchill, at the head of his horse troopers, arrived in Bridgport two days later. Before he left London, the general issued orders for Kirke’s regiment to catch up as fast as it could. Churchill shifted north to Chard on June 19 and waited for Kirke’s regiment, which arrived two days later. Word also came to the royal vanguard that the artillery train had departed London and that additional cavalry forces were on the way. This article is from the August 2009 issue of Military Heritage Magazine . If you would like to read the rest of this and other articles, visit our order page to see which digital editions we have on offer.

Article Meta Data Public Information Duke of Monmouth History | County Seal | County Flag | Mission Statement According to several sources, including a booklet, titled "A Sketch of Monmouth County," published in 1929 by the Board of Chosen Freeholders, Monmouth County was named after the County of Monmouthshire, in South Wales, Great Britain. According to the "Sketch," Monmouth County was officially formed on March 7, 1683, by the General Assembly as one of the four original counties of the Province of East Jersey. "It was named, through the influence of Colonel Lewis Morris, after Monmouthshire, where his family had a vast estate." However, not everyone agrees. Robert N. Ferrell, the long-time historian and former Executive Director of the Monmouth County Historical Commission, believes that the County may have been named after James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth. The strikingly handsome Monmouth had the outward bearing of an ideal monarch, but he lacked the intelligence and resolution needed for a determined struggle for power.

Scott was born in 1649, the illegitimate son of King Charles II and nephew of James, the Duke of York, who succeeded Charles to the throne in 1685. Banished from England because she claimed to be the king's wife, Scott's mother, Lucy Walter, settled with young James in Paris. In 1662 James was brought to England and installed at court as a favorite of the king, who on Feb. 14, 1663, named him Duke of Monmouth, Earl of Doncaster, and Baron Scott of Tindale and made him a Knight of the Garter. With succession to the throne becoming a burning issue in England, where anti-Papal hysteria had been aroused by rumors that Catholics were plotting to seize power, James, the Duke of York, converted to Catholicism. King Charles blocked all parliamentary attempts to exclude James from the royal inheritance, and in September 1679 he banished the Duke of Monmouth from the kingdom. Nevertheless, the Duke quickly returned in defiance of his father and set about building up a following. In this crisis Monmouth was championed for the succession by several leaders of the anti-Catholic Whigs in Parliament.

In 1682-83 Monmouth became involved in the Whig conspiracy against Charles and James, known as the Rye House Plot. Although pardoned for his part in this enterprise, he was banished from court and took refuge in the Netherlands early in 1684. Upon the death of Charles II in 1685, the Duke of York acceded to the throne as James II. Monmouth returned to England with 82 followers in June and quickly raised over 4,000 men, but he was unable to rally the gentry to his rebellion. On July 6 his army of peasantry was totally defeated on the plain of Sedgemoor. He fled but was soon captured and beheaded in the infamous Tower of London. The Duke, who had not yet been executed at the time of the naming of Monmouth County, had many friends and allies among the gentry of East Jersey. Richard Hartshorne, an associate of Monmouth's prior to leaving England, used the name "Monmouth" in a deed in 1678. With all this said, we may never know exactly how Monmouth County got its name.

1000+ images about Royals - UK - Stuart on Pinterest | King james i, Anne of denmark and King james Forward Henrietta Maria of France (25 November 1609 – 10 September 1669) was the Queen consort of England, Scotland, and Ireland as the wife of King Charles I. She was mother of two kings, Charles II and James II, and grandmother of two queens and one king, Mary II, William III and Anne of Great Britain, as well as paternal aunt of Louis XIV of France. The North American Province of Maryland was named in her honor, and the name was carried over into the current U.S. state of Maryland. See More 1000+ images about Illegitimate Children of British Monarchs on Pinterest | Duke, Born in march and Mary boleyn Learn more at en.wikipedia.org Anne Palmer (1661/1662 - 1721/1722). Daughter of Barbara Palmer. Her father is either King Charles II or Philip Stanhope. She married Thomas Lennard and had two daughters. She later had a lesbian relationship with Hortense Mancini, who was also a lover of Charles II.

More ExecutedToday.com » duke of monmouth 2 comments July 21st, 2014 Headsman On this date in 1683 at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London the great Whig parliamentarian William, Lord Russell was beheaded with a legendary want of dexterity by Jack Ketch. The third son of the Earl (later Duke) of Bedford , Lord Russell emerged from a decade of comfortable obscurity in the Parliament’s back benches to become a leading exponent of the nascent Whigs * opposed to royal absolutism and to Catholicism — two heads of the same coin, for the Whigs, given that the heir presumptive James had controversially converted to Catholicism. The national freakout from 1678 over an alleged “Popish Plot” to undo Old Blighty gave Russell his cause; his leadership of the resulting parliamentary bid to exclude James from royal succession made the gregarious Russell “the governing man in the House of Commons” . “ Lord Russell was a man of great candour, and of general reputation; universally beloved and trusted; of a generous and obliging temper,” his friend Gilbert Burnet recorded of our man.

“He had given such proofs of an undaunted courage and of an unshaken firmness, that I never knew any man have so entire a credit in the nation as he had.” Russell was, Burnet allowed, “a slow man, and of little discourse, but he had a true judgment, when he considered things at his own leisure: his understanding was not defective; but his virtues were so eminent, that they would have more than balanced real defects, if any had been found in the other.” Chief among those virtues was his wholehearted sincerity for his cause — a passion the source of both his renown, and his destruction. Russell was heard to espouse the view that James ought not merely be excluded from succession, but executed like his father . Matters never quite approached that point, but the crisis provoked by the Exclusion Bill firebrands led King Charles II to dissolve parliament in 1681, depriving the Whigs of their legal perch. In the ensuing years politics played out not as legislation but conspiracy, and the crown’s rather more successful harassment of same: many of the chief Whig actors were driven offstage to scaffolds, dungeons, or continental exile.

The half-dozen most eminent Whigs remaining — to whom, besides Lord Russell, we number the king’s illegitimate son Monmouth , the Earl of Essex , Baron Howard of Escrick ,** Algernon Sidney , and John Hampden † — formed a sort of informal Council of Six who met secretly to consider the bad options available to the fractured Whig movement. Some section of the wider Whig network in which this Council operated turned eventually to considering the most desperate of measures. Their Rye House Plot schemed to waylay and assassinate the royal person near a fortified manor handily on the king’s route back to London from the Newmarket races . It was owned then by a radical former soldier of Cromwell ‘s New Model Army. It has been long debated to what extent any of the top Whigs knew of or actively participated in this Guy Fawkes ian plot, or its complement, a projected armed rising of the sort that Monmouth would indeed mount in 1685.

One school of thought is that the Tories seized it as an expedient to eviscerate the remaining Whig leadership by conflating the entire movement with a regicidal scheme; another is that the Whig insistence upon its martyrs’ innocence — and Lord Russell is the chief man in this pantheon — has amounted to a fantastic propaganda coup.‡ In June 1683, a salter who was in on the Rye House planning got a cold sweat and informed on the Whigs. This backstab earned a royal pardon for himself, and started a familiar policing sequence of incriminated conspirators turning crown’s evidence and informing in their turn on the next part of the network. Many of the Whigs fled to the Netherlands, received there by the House of Orange which would seat itself on the English throne inside of six years. Lord Russell, however, refused to fly. He landed in the Tower of London by the end of the month, to face trial as a traitor on the evidence of his association with other Whigs and his entertaining the plan of raising an armed revolt.

The judge’s summation to the jury even underscored that “You have not Evidence in the Case as there was [in other Rye House cases] against the Conspirators to kill the King at the Rye. There was a direct Evidence of a Consult to kill the King, that is not given you in this Case: This is an Act of contriving Rebellion, and an Insurrection within the Kingdom, and to seize his Guards, which is urged an Evidence, and surely is in itself an Evidence, to seize and destroy the King.” Lord Russell’s case shifted around the fringes of actual innocence — those plans for Insurrection within the Kingdom, he said, occurred sometimes at meetings he happened to attend but only off on the side, or without Lord Russell’s own involvement or support.

(Speaking from the scaffold, he would several times insist that his acts were at worst misprision of treason , which was no longer a capital crime at this point.) Against this the crown produced Lord Howard, a cravenly interested party to be sure, who saved his own skin by testifying that the six-headed cabal was down to planning the specifics of the places where a rebellion might best be stirred up, the procurements of arms and bankroll that would be necessary to same, and how to draw Scotland into the fray as an ally. “Every one knows my Lord Russell is a Person of great Judgment, and not very lavish in Discourse,” Howard allowed on the point of Russell’s active assent to the plans. “We did not put it to the Vote, but it went without Contradiction, and I took it that all there gave their Consent.” David Hume would observe in his History of Great Britain that Russell’s “present but not part of it” parsing didn’t make for a very compelling story.

“Russell’s crime fell plainly under the statute … his defence was very feeble.” Detail view (click for the full image) of an 1825 painting of Lord Russell’s trial, commissioned of George Hayter by Lord Russell’s admiring kinsman John Russell, Duke of Bedford . John Russell also wrote a biography of his famous ancestor. The unbroken succession of Dukes of Bedford from William Russell’s father continues to the present day; the current Duke of Bedford , 15th of that line, is one of Britain’s richest men. Conscious of the great pulpit his scaffold would offer, Lord Russell drafted with the aid of his wife a last statement vindicating his own person and the Whig cause that flew into print before the onlookers at Lincoln’s Inn Fields were dipping their handkerchiefs into his martyrs’ blood.

Nor did I ever pretend to a great readiness in speaking: I wish those gentlemen of the law who have it, would make more conscience int he use of it, and not run men down by strains and fetches, impose on easy and willing juries, to the ruin of innocent men: For to kill by forms and subtilties of law, is the worst sort of murder … I never had any design against the king’s life, or the life of any man whatsoever; so I never was in any contrivance of altering the government. What the heats, wickedness, passions, and vanities of other men have occasioned, I ought not to be answerable for; nor could I repress them, though I now suffer for them. These notices drew furious confutations from Tory pamphleteers aghast at the face these traitors had to forswear their malice against King Charles; a battle of broadsides to control the historical narrative ensued, and was resolved in the Whigs’ favor by the imminent conquest of power by the aforementioned House of Orange. The Whig-aligned William and Mary reversed Lord Russell’s attainder in 1689 — but that’s never stood in the way of historians’ debates.

In a much lower historical register, Lord Russell’s execution was egregiously bungled by the London headsman Jack Ketch, who had to bash repeatedly at the man’s neck before he could remove it from the shoulders. It is largely from this event that Ketch derives his lasting reputation as an incompetent and/or sadistic butcher, mutually reinforcing with Russell’s martyr status. Ketch would later claim in a published “Apologie” issued against “those grievous Obloquies and Invectives that have been thrown upon me for not Severing my Lords Head from his Body at one blow” that his prey died with more Galantry than Discresion, and did not dispose him for receiving of the fatal Stroke in such a posture as was most suitable, for whereas he should have put his hands before his Breast, or else behind him, he spread them out before him, nor would he be persuaded to give any Signal or pull his Cap over his eyes, which might possibly be the Occasion that discovering the Blow, he somewhat heav’d his Body and besides that Ketch “receav’d some Interruption just as I was taking Aim, and going to give the Blow.” How would you like it if someone came to your workplace and did that?

The damage to Ketch’s reputation was already done. Two years later, en route to the block for a subsequent failed bid to topple the Stuarts, the Duke of Monmouth tipped Ketch with the scornful charge not to “hack me as you did my Lord Russell.” When Ketch botched that execution too, he was nearly lynched — but escaped the scaffold to live on in Punch and Judy and in the English tongue as the definitive lowlife executioner. * Short for “Whiggamores” , who were Covenanter rebels in the 1640s. “Tories”, by contrast, took their name from Irish Catholic outlaws: each party became known by the slur its foes attached to it . ** Yes, another one of those Howards: this Howard’s great-grandfather lost his head for the Ridolfi intrigue .

† Hampden survived the suppression of Whig intrigues long enough to coin the term “Glorious Revolution” when the Stuarts were finally overthrown ‡ See for instance Lois Schwoerer, "William, Lord Russell: The Making of a Martyr, 1683-1983" in Journal of British Studies, January 1985 for a skeptical-of-Russell reading of the evidence. “The government did not concoct the plot; it was frightened by the revelations, whatever use it made of them. There is no doubt that proposals for an insurrection of some kind were discussed; Russell’s impetuosity and extremism make it more likely than not that he was an active party to these discussions. What is in doubt, since nothing came of the discussions, is how far the parties had gone in developing a concrete plan for a rising.” On this day.. The Battle of Sedgemoor The Battle of Sedgemoor Westonzoyland, Somerset rebel troops under James, Duke of Monmouth vs. a royal army led by Lord Feversham James, Duke of Monmouth was an illegitimate son of Charles II. Charles heaped honours upon James, and made him a Duke.

The Protestant Monmouth became a figurehead for those opposed to the Catholic James, Duke of York. When Charles died in February, 1685, Monmouth was in Holland. Though he personally seems to have had very little ambition to seize the crown, he was persuade by his Protestant advisors, notably the Earl of Argyll, to launch an invasion in the west country while Argyll landed in Scotland. Against his better judgment Monmouth took ship for England and landed in Lyme Regis on June 11. His small band of 83 men soon swelled to 3000 as volunteers flocked to his cause. Such a large percentage of Monmouth's followers were poor farmers and peasants that the rising later became known as The Pitchfork Rebellion, though in truth many volunteers were turned away because they lacked adequate arms. At Taunton, Monmouth was declared King of England for the first time, and with nearly 8000 ill-equipped men he marched on Bristol. Monmouth abandoned his plan to take Bristol after only token opposition led by Lord Churchill's cavalry. The Duke marched his men rather aimlessly south to Bridgwater, pursued by Lord Feversham.

Many of Monmouth's supporters must have deserted at this point, especially after news came that Argyll had been caught and executed in Scotland. In despair, Monmouth ordered a surprise attack on the royal army under cover of darkness. The Battle The rebel forces moved out of Bridgwater at 11pm under strict orders for silence. Any man who made a noise was to be stabbed immediately by his neighbor. Monmouth's surprise advance might have worked, but he was undone when a sentinel (or perhaps a traitor in Monmouth's ranks) fired a pistol when the rebels were still a mile from the royal camp, and the element of surprise was gone. Desperate now, Monmouth sent his cavalry ahead to engage the enemy as quickly as possible, and his foot soldiers followed as quickly as they could. The main body of the cavalry crumpled quickly in the face of heavy fire by the alerted defenders. Feversham sent his own horsemen to flank Monmouth's men, and at first light the royal troops attacked the rebels on three sides. Though Monmouth's untrained volunteers fought bravely, they were doomed from the start.

Perhaps 1300 rebels were killed in the battle and the pursuit that followed, and another 500 were captured and held in the Westonzoyland church. The royal losses may have been as low as 200 men. The Results Monmouth was captured and imprisoned in the Tower of London. After a trial which was little more than a formality he was executed. His followers were brutally suppressed, in part by the infamous Judge Jeffries, who presided over peremptory trials of rebels and their sympathizers. So ferocious were the reprisals that Jeffries' court became known as the Bloody Assizes.

Question: The Duke of Monmouth, who was executed in 1685 after leading a rebellion against King James II, was the illegitimate son of which monarch?
Answer: King Charles II