After the Duke of Monmouth’s capture near the New Forest, on the 13th of July 1685, after his luckless attempt to wrest the Crown from James at Sedgemoor, he, with Lord Grey of Wark, was brought to London and imprisoned in the Tower, the warrant for his committal being thus worded: “James, Duke of Monmouth, 13 July, for High Treason in levying war against the King and assuming a title to the Crown.” Monmouth had married Lady Anne Scott, daughter of the Earl of Buccleuch, when he was only fourteen years of age, but the union does not appear to have been a happy one. When the Duchess came to take her last leave of him after his condemnation, the interview is said “to have passed with decency, but without tokens of affection”; the prisoner’s heart was elsewhere. Monmouth had no lack of clergymen to see him pass out of the world at the close of his short and wasted life, for during the day and night before he died, four ecclesiastics were in attendance upon him, and they never left him till the end. These were Tenison, then Vicar of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, but afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, and Primate; Turner, Bishop of Rochester; Hooper, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells; and the saint-like Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells. When Tenison reproached the Duke for the want of feeling he had shown towards his wife, Monmouth replied that “his heart was turned against her, because in his affliction she had gone to the play and into public companies, by which I knew she did not love me.” The woman he loved best, and with whom he had been living, was Lady Harriet Wentworth, the daughter of Lord Cleveland.
Accompanied by the four clergymen, Monmouth left the Tower on the morning of the 15th of July, at ten o’clock; the writ for the delivery of the Duke’s body to the Sheriffs is still to be seen in the Record Office, being addressed to Sir William Gostling and Sir Peter Vanderpatt, and endorsed by them on receiving the Duke from the charge of the Lieutenant of the Tower.
Monmouth passed on foot through a lane of soldiers, preceded by three officers, who carried pistols and accompanied him on to the scaffold. The Duke’s appearance caused a commotion in the crowd which had come to see him die; he had always been a favourite with the people, his personal beauty probably being the principal reason for his popularity; and he was also regarded as a kind of hero on the Protestant side, as opposed to James the Second and the Romish priests. The populace had recently given him the title of “King Monmouth.”
The scaffold was all draped in black. Monmouth made no speech to the people, but only conversed with the clergymen near him; but he had prepared the following statement, written on a sheet of paper, which he gave to one of the Bishops:—“I declare that the title of King was forced upon me, and that it was very much contrary to my opinion when I was proclaimed. For the satisfaction of the world I do declare that the late King told me he was never married to my mother. Having declared this, I hope that the King who is now, will not let my children suffer on this account. And to this I put my hand this 15 July 1685. Monmouth.” This extraordinary statement was also signed by the four clerics and the two Sheriffs.
Execution of the Duke of Monmouth, July, 1685.
“Pray do your business well,” Monmouth said to Jack Ketch, the headsman. “Do not serve 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.” Unfortunately poor Monmouth was even worse served by the executioner than Russell had been, and it was not until the blows had been repeated five times that the once beautiful head was separated from the body. Jack Ketch was almost torn to pieces by the horrified and furious mob.
It is almost incredible to believe, did one not know the baseness of James’s character, that he had two medals struck in commemoration of Monmouth’s execution—“savage medals,” as they were appropriately called. “Thus,” writes John Evelyn of Monmouth’s death, “ended this quondam Duke, darling of his father, and the ladies, being extremely handsome and adroit; an excellent soldier and dancer, a favourite of the people, of an easy nature, seduced by knaves, who would have set him up only to make a property, and taken the opportunity of the King being of another religion, to gather a party of discontented men. He failed and perished, had a virtuous and excellent lady that brought him great riches and a second Dukedom in Scotland.”
The son of that Marquis of Argyll who had raised the standard of rebellion in Scotland in conjunction with Monmouth’s rising in England, and who was beheaded in Edinburgh in the same year, was a prisoner in the Tower for some weeks. The following is the entry with reference to him taken from the Tower records:—“25 June 1685. Archibald Campbell, son to the late Marquis of Argyll, upon suspicion of dangerous practices to the State. Signed by his Majesty’s command. Sunderland.” The young man was, however, discharged on the 19th of the following October. After his liberation he went to Holland, returning to England with William III., when he was created first Duke of Argyll.
The Stuarts had solemnly vowed to rule England in the Reformed and Protestant faith, but within a quarter of a century of their restoration, the Church of Rome had not only been allowed by them to recover many of its privileges, but Roman Catholicism had become the religion of the King and court. James had set aside the Test Act, a measure passed by Parliament in 1663, which required every individual in the civil and military employment of the State to take the oath of supremacy and allegiance, to declare against the doctrine of transubstantiation, and to declare in favour of the doctrine of the Sacrament as taught by the Church of England. By annulling this act James re-admitted Roman Catholics to any office in the country, both in civil and military situations. Four Roman Catholic peers were added to the Privy Council; priests and Jesuits flocked into the country in great numbers, and Mass was publicly celebrated in the Chapel Royal. London again saw the almost forgotten costumes of the different religious orders, the brown-robed Franciscans, and the white-robed Carmelites, whilst the Jesuit priests opened a school at the Savoy. At the same time the King added largely to the standing army, and a camp of thirteen thousand men was established at Hounslow, destined, if James thought necessary, to keep the capital in check. Whilst James was thus trying to coerce his subjects to the Roman Catholic religion, the Protestants across the Channel were being persecuted by Louis; for by a strange coincidence—if not by a prearranged plan—the same year that saw the violation of the Test Act in England, witnessed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, with the result that thousands of French reformers were driven from their homes and crossed to England—a living proof of the curse that a bigoted and arbitrary ruler could be to his subjects.