“Aye, Your Majesty, I am a fool, and my actions were wrong, I acknowledge this. But, Your Majesty is my uncle, and I cannot believe my uncle would shed my blood.” He crawled over and kissed King James’s shoes. “Please, please, I beg Your Majesty to spare my life. I will devote my life to thy service in any way Your Majesty sees fit.”
“Spare your life? You must take me for a dotard, Sir. You will be made an example of. That anyone who dares to defy their true king will feel my just wrath!”
“Your Majesty has raised my hopes by coming hither, only to dash them before me.” It was generally known that if a King came to speak with one awaiting the executioner’s block, he would be spared, but James was not a man to forgive.
It mattered not how Monmouth pleaded, pathetically, upon the floor before him. James remained unmoved by the young man’s tears and cries for mercy. His lust for power and authority could brook no rival to remain living. So many people had loved Monmouth, but not enough to take up arms and fight for his right to the throne of England. Even the Dowager Queen Catherine, Charles’s long-suffering wife, had been moved to write a letter to James, and therein did she plead for the life of her husband’s eldest, and dearest, bastard boy.
But it was for nought. James stubbornly refused to budge from his position. Monmouth had betrayed him, a King, and such treason could not and would not go unpunished. To betray a king was to betray God, and therefore, mercy, he thought, was for fools. Even his wife and consort, Mary, had agreed that Monmouth needed punishment for his crimes.
All this did King James think of whilst his nephew lay snivelling before him. “You will be made an example of – so that all who dare defy me will know what fate will await them should they choose to take the same path. The name of Monmouth will forever be marked with infamy and treachery, and your lineage will bear the ignominy and humiliation of your tainted blood in their veins.”
Monmouth had listened, open-jawed at his uncle’s words, and he was moved to speak, “My God, how unfeeling you have become, uncle mine. It is you, and not I, that should be concerned about the future. My end lies clearly before me now, but yours is yet to be seen. You have no legitimate heirs of your body, and perhaps one day one of your bastard sons will rise up to claim what he thinks is his right to claim. Would you wish him the same fate that you have chosen for me?”
“A rebel is a rebel!” cried the King, zealously. “You have sealed your own fate. May God have mercy on your soul, for I certainly will not.
“I have read your pocket book, which is full of mystical notions and charms and spells. I have always known you were a fool, but even that surprised me…” the King began to laugh.
Monmouth lowered his head, “They are but foolish conceits after all.”
Chapter 31
That night in his cell, Monmouth peered out of the tiny window, and through the rusty iron bars, gazed at the midsummer night’s sky, which was dotted with the sparkling stars and the moon pale light wavered behind passing black clouds.
She was out there; warm in her bed, waiting for his return, her sleeping form no doubt basking in this same moonlight. He could imagine the moonbeams dancing upon her fair form, the summer breeze kissing her soft cheek. Did she now know that he had failed? Would she grieve for him when he had gone? Perhaps she would find another, and marry. Would she then love that lucky man and forget him?
The Tower’s ravens cawed ominously, disturbing his already tortured thoughts.
The Bishop of Ely and Doctor Ken visited the doomed duke in his cell, and they pleaded with him to repent for the sin of living with a woman other than his wife.
“You have lived in abject sin and you must confess that you have been an adulterer, a fornicator and a traitor!”
“I confess that my actions are that of a traitor, but my love for Lady Wentworth goes beyond any human law. Call it what you will, but I will not forsake her now at the hour of my death. In the eyes of God above she is my true wife.”
“James Scott - we cannot give you the sacrament of Eucharist without your acknowledgement of the sinfulness of your life.”
“Oh, I have sinned. I have been debauched, have murdered, have coveted, and have lusted. I have done almost every sinful thing imaginable, but my love Lady Wentworth was no sin! Her love saved me! The only sin I have committed is that I was born the bastard son of a king and a whore.”
“Repent! I beseech you to repent.”
“I will not repent the best thing in my life. If either of you had a heart you would not ask this of me!”
The old man sighed, weary of arguing for one so hopelessly lost.
“Then you will be damned to eternal hellfire.”
“Get thee gone, the both of you!” Monmouth shouted to the man before him, “I have said my piece and wish to have the last remaining hours of my life in prayer and solitude.”
The men shook their heads and made the sign of the cross as they left and the rusty-hinged cell door creaked and shut with a loud clang. There was a rustling of keys and the footsteps of the men echoed down the stone passage.
He thought that would be an end to visitors until they would come to take him to the scaffold, but he soon received some other visitors. His wife, Anna, had come, with their children. They were all weeping, even Anna – who had always been so cold with him in the past. She hobbled in, for she had a pronounced limp ever since she damaged her thigh dancing many years before.
He bent down to embrace and kiss each of the three children. Anna had not seen her husband in some time, and when last she saw him he was his healthy, handsome self, but now he was both extremely slim and almost deathly pale. He had the look of a man who had been through Hell. Instantly, she pitied him.
“Oh, James,” cried the Duchess, falling to her knees before him – something she had never done before. “Oh, my husband, forgive me for not being a good wife to you. I could have saved you from all this misery if things had been different. If I had been kinder to you, perhaps you would not have gone away. I pushed you away, forgive me.”
It was too much for him to bear, and he fell to his knees and wept with his wife. Years had passed since they had seen each other, yet the bond of man and wife was still present, though love had never touched their union.
“How can you say this, Anna? I have been unfaithful to you; I have been a false husband to you, and undeserving of these beautiful children that you have borne for me. No, ‘tis I who must apologise to you.”
He looked into her weeping eyes, and begged, “Forgive me. I beg you all to forgive me.”
She nodded, “Aye, you have my forgiveness.” He kissed her forehead for it.
His eldest boy threw his little arms around his father’s waist. “Papa, please make the king stop this. We don’t want you to die.”
“My boy,” he said, looking at his eleven year old son, James, “How you’ve grown! You’ll make a fine man someday, and I pray you’ll be better than your father was.”
He stroked his ten-year-old daughter Anne’s chubby cheeks, and patted his eight-year-old son Henry on the head. Tears spilling from his eyes, Monmouth said, “My dear children, I pray you will be obedient and good to your mother always and to follow the King. Be loyal subjects to him, as your father could not.”
Little Anne began to sob uncontrollably, “Papa, no! If you have to go, I want to go with you.”
“Hush now, little one. You must be strong and help your mother now.”
“Goodbye, children. I hope that someday you will forgive me.”
The cries of his children echoed down the stone halls of the Tower, which had heard much the same wailing in its history.
Monmouth, now alone, lay down upon the straw and wept. He was the son of Charles II, and the people loved him, and he by God, he knew he should be king. Had not the country folk in Devon cheered him as he and his troops rode north? Had they not rejoiced at his arrival?
His mind returned to the memories of his life – which raced by like a dream. His
remembered mother’s beautiful face – a picture of Welsh loveliness with her bright blue-green eyes, white skin, and dark brown hair with its tempestuous curls. His heart felt the old pain of being separated from her, taken away from her, never to see her again. But then he remembered his father, his beloved father with his leonine grin, and innate warmth, so easy and jovial – the best of men.
If my father saw me now, what would he say?
Monmouth wept for his father, and for himself, as he thought on his many happy times at court, from his father’s triumphant Restoration in sixteen-sixty to the balls, the stately dinners, the raucous, witty pastimes in his father’s golden court. He remembered the time when he was the apple of his father’s eye, when he could do no wrong. He remembered his wedding to Anna Scott – the child-bride to whom he was still tied. How she had wept like a babe when he had consummated the marriage! He remembered the strange emotion that had come upon him when she had placed their first child in his arms.
He remembered the Merry Gang – Wilmot, Sedley, Villiers, and the others and their many nights of debauchery, the faces of the women he had bedded. He remembered Barbara Villiers’s monstrous tantrums against her father, viciously smashing china in her fury. His thoughts went to Holland, where he spent that merry time in exile with his cousins, William and Mary. Their conversations had been witty and delightful. His thoughts then turned to his military achievements, and how he had once had the reputation of being the greatest soldier in England. And was this now to end? Was he, the son of a king, to be killed and forgotten? He dared not think on it.
Then he thought of her, the woman who had put an end to his lusty flailing, the woman who brought love into a life that had only known lust.
My Harriet.
He thought of her, acutely regretting the missed opportunity of a happy, peaceful lifetime with her. He should have stayed with her, done as she pleaded him to do. He should have stayed to see her grow big-bellied with his babe; he should have been there with her now, in her soft, alabaster-white arms. He should never have let those villains coerce him into rebellion, they who preyed upon his weakness of character.
He slammed his fists into the hay, again and again, until the hay was speckled with his blood from his battered flesh.
If he could not be a Protestant King for this Protestant country of England, he would die a martyr for his cause.
By God, I am only thirty six...
Chapter 32
On the fifteenth of July 1685, that sorrowful day ultimately arrived. He had prepared himself as well as any man could have in such a position. Monmouth was roughly manhandled and pushed onto the cart like any common criminal, but he allowed himself to breathe in the cool breeze, which floated off the nearby Thames River. Though inwardly he was frightened, as any man would be, he made no outward show of this and all present noted how calm and dignified he behaved.
The rickety cart travelled up from the old Tower to the even more ancient Tower Hill, where a scaffold had been erected for the purpose of his death. It was this same spot where George Boleyn, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Guilford Dudley, and many others had suffered terribly and died. Monmouth found some comfort in this, that his name would one day be remembered with theirs.
As he looked upon the veritable sea of people that had come to witness his death; he hoped that the English people would remember him, his sacrifice, and the injustice of it all…
Some of the women were weeping already, others heckled at him as he passed amongst them. Monmouth, with his elegance of movement, then rose onto the scaffold, his eyes falling upon the block, the crowds, and then the executioner.
His heart faltered when he beheld the man.
It was Jack Ketch.
The much-feared Ketch, a man who came from a lowly background in which his mother was perpetually partaking from a gin bottle and his pick-pocketing father had been hanged when he was a young lad. Ketch’s physiognomy suggested to some that he was by nature a brute, a thug. He remembered with horror that this was the same man who had butchered his friend, Lord Russell. Three chops of the axe before his head had been severed.
He shivered with dread.
He turned again to look at the thousands of people that had come to witness his death. As far as his eyes could see, there were people, his people.
“Good people,” he said, his voice clear and strong, “I am come here to die, my heart full of repentance for ever having caused such great offence to His Majesty the King. I will say no more of this, but I say unto you all to free the Lady Henrietta Wentworth from your malice. She was ever virtuous and good and we never lived in sin. I will make no speech, since I have said I would not.”
As he said this, he looked up at the sky – it was a beautiful summer’s day. The sun was shining brightly, with a cloud here and there in the rare blue sky above London. Some birds were singing nearby, their song made his heart swell. It was so beautiful, all of it. It was almost as beautiful as that spring day amidst the violet-blue canopy of bluebells in Toddington.
“Do you forgive me, Sir?”
He then turned in the direction of the raspy voice, to the man whose duty would be to shortly end his life, but his eyes caught sight of the axe – it was completely blunt. He swallowed deeply, and looked at Ketch, and quietly spoke to him, “Aye, I forgive you, but here are six guineas,” handing him a small purse full of coin, thankful that he had the coin to give, “I pray that you do not hack me up as you did my Lord Russell. I have heard that you struck him three or four times.”
Ketch nodded as he put the purse into his pocket. Monmouth could see the man was nervous, his palms were sweaty and he kept drying them upon his clothing. Ketch already felt as though the world was watching him, judging him, and the Duke’s words merely exacerbated his own state of anxiety.
His gaze fell upon the dull axe again, “I fear ‘tis not sharp enough,” he said to Ketch.
“Tis fit enough to do the job.”
Monmouth nodded. “My servant there,” he said, pointing to a man who stood, pale-faced, by the corner of the scaffold, “will give you some more gold if you do your work well.”
Please, God, let him perform his duty well…
Ketch looked at man and nodded at the Duke of Monmouth. He had more proficiency in hanging criminals than in beheading them, for beheading was an honour given to nobles, and they were rarely executed, and he steadily grew more nervous as the time came upon them.
The Duke calmly unbuttoned his waistcoat and handed it to his man, next, he too took off his periwig, revealing his grey-streaked chestnut hair.
He politely refused the blindfold and cap.
He looked upon the wooden block, knelt before it, lowered his body down, and laid his left cheek against the wooden surface, made warm by the sun.
“Henrietta,” he whispered, shutting his eyes.
Quickly, he thrust his arms out in signal. Ketch lifted his axe, swung and struck upon the duke’s neck, causing only a gash.
Aagh! The fool missed!
Monmouth staggered to his feet, blood curdling in his throat, as he looked up at Ketch with an expression of pain and anger as his red blood trickled out of the angry gash and down his white shirtsleeves. With great pain, he then lowered his head again unto the wooden block that was already smeared with his blood.
Ketch lifted the blunt axe and swung again, and in a clunking movement, rammed down into the Duke’s shoulder - at which point the crowds around the scaffold began shouting obscenities in protest against his incompetence. As the vile executioner swung his unwieldy axe a third time, screams of horror were heard from the crowds as the blood spurted out from a partially severed artery.
His head was still attached to his body.
Pain.
No words could describe his pain. His eyes, blinded by tears and blood saw nothing of the chaos. He vaguely heard the shrieks of women and men calling for the death of the executioner.
They began threatening to kill Ketch for it.
Ketch, in fully-fledged panic, threw his axe down and shouted, “I cannot do it.”
The Duke was in throes at the most acute agony that could be imagined and his body was convulsing and twitching, his blood spurting out of each terrible wound.
The Sheriff hollered, “For Chris’ sake, man, finish the job! Do it!”
Ketch took up his axe and swung a fourth time, severing halfway through the Duke’s neck this time. The screams and sobs from the crowds drowned out the pained, gurgling sounds emanating from the young Duke’s suffering body. A few women fainted from the sheer horror of the scene.
Ketch raised his blood-splattered axe a fifth time and this time hacked through a bit deeper still, but not fully. The Duke’s body stopped convulsing then and Ketch then unhooked a knife from his belt and began to sever the remaining tissue and sinew until the Duke’s head toppled to the scaffold floor with a sickening thud. His blood gushed out in a torrent from his neck.
A collective hush fell upon the whole of Tower Hill and tears fell freely from the grave-faced spectators.
It was horrible, despicable!
He was the acknowledged son of Charles the Second! They had all expected, or at least hoped, that Ketch would this time perform his office with mercy, yet he had shown none.
Ketch held the bloody head aloft by the hair, “So die all traitors to the King!”
No one cheered, but many wept, as Monmouth’s head continued to drip with his blood, the face upon it one of pure anguish. The Bishop of Ely raised his handkerchief to his mouth to prevent himself from vomiting. Many trudged along, heads bowed, towards the scaffold and dipped their kerchiefs into his blood as a macabre keepsake of the event.
And thus ended a love affair, a rebellion, and a life. James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, the handsome, beloved and illegitimate son of King Charles II, was no more.
His Last Mistress: The Duke of Monmouth and Lady Henrietta Wentworth Page 11