The Glorious Revolution

by Edward Vallance

  The judge’s net caught both the old and the young. Dame Alice Lisle, seventy years old and the widow of a regicide, was accused of sheltering two fugitives after Sedgemoor: John Hickes, a nonconformist minister, and Richard Nelthorpe, a London lawyer. There was no evidence that Lisle had known that either of them was a rebel but a clear ruling from Jeffreys drove the jury to find her guilty. Her sentence – she was ordered to be burnt at the stake – was commuted to beheading after petitioning to the King. It was reported that she made no comments on the scaffold as ‘she was old and dozy and died without much concern’.27 At the other end of the age scale were the ‘maids of Taunton’, girls who had presented Monmouth with colours on his entry into the town and were indicted for misdemeanour. Albemarle made calculations of the wealth of their parents and forced them to sue for pardon at the price of £7000.29 By the time the suit had been concluded, at the cost of £50–100 a girl, one of the ‘maids’ had already died in prison. There was little trace of sympathy from the royalist press, which portrayed the ‘maids’ as round-heeled yokels who had surrendered their petticoats to the Duke’s cause and their bodies to Monmouth’s lascivious embraces.29

  The practice of milking the accused and their families for bribes in return for a royal pardon was commonplace, and ‘pardon-mongers’ like the Dorset attorney Andrew Loder made small fortunes out of the assizes. More often than not, Loder’s customers found that their money had been completely wasted as in the end their relatives were saved not by his efforts (which were negligible) but by the general pardon issued by the Crown in March 1686. Samuel Bishop, the uncle of fourteen-year old Thomas Bishop, who had joined Monmouth’s army, paid Loder £100 to secure a pardon for the boy. However, Loder, though asking for another £100 for his ‘services’, had not bothered to request a pardon and Thomas was saved only by the proclamation of March 1686. Samuel unsuccessfully sued Loder to try to recover his money.30

  Those who were not pardoned were subject to the full punishment for treason: they were to be hanged until almost dead, then to be eviscerated while still alive, and finally their corpses were to be divided into quarters which would be boiled in salt water and tarred to better preserve them for public display. It is estimated that around 250 people were executed as a result of the bloody assizes, but the process of hanging, drawing and quartering was so lengthy that only about a dozen of the condemned could be dispatched a day. Edward Hobbes, Sheriff of Somerset, ordered the authorities in Bath to make preparations for the executions, first by erecting

  a gallows in the most public place of yor said cittie to hang the said traytors and a furnace or cauldron to boyle their heads and quarters, and salt to boyle therewith, halfe a bushel to each traytor, and tarr to tarr ym with and a sufficient number of spears and poles to fix and place their heads and quarters, and that you warne the owners of fower oxen to bee rady with a dray or wayne and the said fower oxen at the time herafter mencioned for the execution.

  The list of requirements was so long that Hobbes had almost forgotten to mention a couple of crucial items: ‘PS. You are also to provide an axe and cleaver for the quartering of the said rebels.’31 All of these preparations had to be paid for, and parish registers, such as those of Axminster, recorded in emotionless, banal detail the costs of paying gaolers, executioners and gallows builders: ‘Laid out about the execution of John Rose £2 18s and 10d. Paid for the building of the gallowse 16s.

  ‘Paid Thomas Whitty for taking rebels 1s 6d. Paid for taking and carrying to prison Caleb Bragg, John Beere, Richard Samson £8.’32

  Northmore, Sheriff of Devon, complained of the ‘extraordinary charge of whippinge and executinge the prisoners’, but reported that, having ridden to Wells, he had managed get some ‘mitigation’ for the county in this respect.33 Boiled in salted water and tarred to preserve them from decay, the quarters and heads of the executed rebels were parcelled out across the south-west like so many Christmas hams. The executions carried on into late autumn, and a newsletter of October 1685 reported that three rebels were executed at Honiton: ‘They were quartered and boiled and one of them sent to be hung up at Plymouth, another at Dartmouth and the other to be hung up there, his head on the top of the shambles and his quarters at the four quarters of the borough. They made no confession but died seemingly unconcerned.’34

  The ongoing butchery of so many rebels so long after the defeat of the rebellion began to revolt even those close to the court. Sir Charles Lyttleton, who witnessed the execution of eight rebels at Taunton felt that more would be heard of this when the Parliament met: ‘of the execution of so many traitors here … and all quarted, and more every day in other parts of ye country … near three hundred; and most of theyr quarters are, and will be, set up in ye towns and highways so that ye country looks already like a shambles’.35 By the end of 1685 James II and his agents had turned the south-west into ‘a vast anatomical museum’.36

  However, death was not the sole punishment reserved for Monmouth’s rebels. A further 850 men were sentenced to transportation, mainly to the West Indies, as indentured servants forced to give ten years’ service before they were free to leave. (Those transported were finally pardoned by William III in February 1690, but through the petitioning of West Indies governors it was announced that, though the servants were free, they would not be able to leave the islands without the governor’s permission.) Those who benefited from the sale of these servants were overwhelmingly courtiers and included some Catholics, such as the Queen and the West Countryman Jeremiah Nipho. This was despite the complaint of Jeffreys to the King (with no small hint of self-interest) that ‘if your Majesty orders them [the prisoners] as you have already designed, persons that have not suffered in your service will run away with the booty, and I am sure sir, your Majesty will be continually perplexed with petitions for recompences for sufferers as well as rewards for servants’. The prisoners were after all, he said, ‘worth 101 [pounds], if not 151, a piece’.37

  One of those sentenced to transportation was Henry Pitman, who, with his brother William, was sold first to Nipho and then by him to ‘George Penne, a needy Papist’. Penne attempted to maximise his investment by suggesting that if a sufficient bribe were forthcoming from Pitman’s family he would be prepared to free them. Consequently the family paid Penne £60 on the understanding that Henry and his brother would be sold to a nominal ‘master’ who would require no actual service from them. But Penne did not keep his bargain and sold the Pitmans to Robert Bishop, who, Henry claimed, once beat him so fiercely for refusing to work unless they were better fed that he broke the cane upon his back. After this beating Henry Pitman was placed in the stocks for twelve hours.38 William Pitman died in service and Henry resolved to escape before he met the same fate. Through money sent by his relatives in England, he was able to purchase a boat and, along with seven other men (including six other former rebels), used the cover of a reception for the Governor of Nevis to escape from Barbados on 9 May 1687. A week later the party landed on the island of Saltatudos (so named because of its large, natural salt pans, from which the mineral was collected). The island, however, was already occupied by some privateers who claimed to be supporters of Monmouth and urged Pitman and his companions to join them on their ship. Persuasion having failed, they burnt Pitman’s boat but he managed to persuade four of his party to remain on the island. The Crusoesque nature of Pitman’s escapade was completed by his purchase of his own Friday from the privateers: he bought from them for thirty pieces of eight an Indian ‘who I expected would be serviceable unto us in catching fish etc’.39 With no boat to take them off the island, those who remained lived off turtle meat and eggs supplemented by fish caught with bow and arrow by the Indian and seabird chicks ‘but they did eat extremely fishy’. Pitman relaxed by smoking wild sage in a pipe fashioned from a hollowed-out crab’s claw.40

  After three months on the island they finally saw an English ship, again of privateers, but they would take only Pitman, whose skill as a surgeon made him a us
eful addition to the crew, though they left some stores and fresh provisions for those who remained on the island. Travelling via the Bahamas and New York, Pitman finally secured in 1688 passage back to England, where he ‘returned in disguise to my relations: who, before this time, unknown to me, had procured my Pardon; and joyfully received me, as one risen from the dead. For having received no account from me since I left Barbadoes; they did almost despair of seeing me any more.’41

  The fate of those left behind on the island was less happy. John Nuthall and Thomas Waker, who had not been part of Monmouth’s rebellion, attempted to re-rig a dilapidated boat left on the island by the privateers. They set sail in it but were never heard from again, presumed drowned. The remainder managed to seize a ship from another gang of privateers who landed on the island, but were later captured by a Spanish vessel that had deceived them by flying the British Jack. The Spaniards took them to St Jago, where they were kept as slaves for six months. John Wicker, who wrote up their account, detailed the harsh conditions they faced there:

  When they went to sea, we were carried as their slaves, to pump ship, wash their clothes, and beat corn in great wooden mortars, with Negroes, with naked swords, always standing by as overseers: so that our hands have been bladdered [blistered], and so sore that we could hardly hold anything. When at home, our business was to row the canoe up two leagues into the country; full of jars, to fetch water, which we were forced to carry upon our naked backs a great way, to fill them.

  One of their party, Jeremiah Atkins, another Monmouth rebel, died from fever aboard the Spanish ship. His body was dumped, without ceremony, into the sea. Wicker was finally freed from this harsh service by an order of the Governor of St Jago that all English prisoners were to be released.42 By 1715 only 2 per cent of the rebels who had been deported to Barbados could be traced in that year’s census. Most had by then escaped or bought their freedom, and a few, like William Pitman, had found the hot climate, poor diet and hard labour too much to bear.43

  Given the gruesome punishment meted out to the Monmouth rebels, and the public distaste registered at their treatment, even by individuals close to the court such as Lyttleton, it might be expected that the rebellion represented a turning point in public opinion towards King James. However, although the continuation of execution of rebels into October and November of 1685 was unquestionably counter-productive, eliciting sympathy for Monmouth’s followers and unease at the practices of the government, it did not lead to a fundamental breach between the Crown and the public. First, it is important to set the aftermath of the Monmouth rebellion in the context of the generally harsh treatment meted out to rebels in the Tudor and Stuart period. An estimated four thousand rebels were killed in the field during the western rebellion of 1549. Up to three hundred more may have been executed afterwards, though there is clear evidence of only forty-nine paying the ultimate penalty for treason. Following the northern rebellion of 1572, Elizabeth I demanded that seven hundred of the rank-and-file rebels should be executed according to martial law, although in all probability only 450 were put to death.44 Nonetheless, this is still significantly more than the number estimated to have suffered after Monmouth’s rebellion. Transportation was also a common punishment used by the Cromwellian regime against prisoners of war. So, in terms of the punishment of previous rebellions against the Crown, the treatment of the Duke’s followers was not unprecedented. However, it was (with the obvious exception of the civil wars) the only major, popular rebellion in the seventeenth century and the last of this kind of popular uprising in English history, and the memory of the earlier, Tudor experiences may have dimmed somewhat.

  More important in terms of shaping public reaction to Sedgemoor and its aftermath were James II’s own strenuous efforts to stress that the Church of England was safe in his hands. In his speech to the Privy Council after his brother’s death, which he wisely ordered to be printed for public consumption, James stated that he would make it his duty ‘to preserve this government both in church and state as it is by law established’. He went on to say that he knew that the ‘principles of the Church of England’ were ‘for monarchy and the members of it have shown themselves good and loyal subjects; therefore I shall always take care to defend and support it’. Moreover, he promised to rule according to law as ‘the laws of England are sufficient to make the king as great a monarch as I can wish’.45 These assurances were repeated before the Anglican clergy and the members of his first Parliament and they would only be undermined later on as James made clearer his intention to have the Test and Corporation Acts repealed.

  Added to these public assurances about his commitment to the status quo in Church and State was James’s clear attachment to the principle of hereditary succession and his equally clear lack of a legitimate heir. His wife, Mary of Modena, had not been able to bear him a child who had survived beyond infancy and James was resigned to the fact that the crown would fall on his death to his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her Protestant husband, William of Orange. At this stage, then, rule by a Popish Prince looked to be a short-term phenomenon and one which, if the King’s guarantees concerning the Anglican Church were kept, was preferable to the war and anarchy that might follow support for a Protestant candidate like Monmouth.

  Importantly, too, there was little sign that the crowd in London sympathised with Monmouth’s cause. Most crowd activity in the 1680s was instigated by the Tories, not the Whigs, and until 1686 there was very little sign of public disaffection with James’s rule.46 The capital, then, remained secure. Equally there were no risings in the north, and in Scotland, the most unruly of the Stuart kingdoms in the later seventeenth century, Argyll’s revolt represented the last, feeble assault on James’s authority. The Tory reaction seemed to have effectively broken the strength of the Whig party both in London and in the provinces, with civic corporations and Parliament itself overwhelmingly occupied by those whose core intellectual attachments were to the established Church and the hereditary succession.

  The legacy of Monmouth’s rebellion was in the short term actually to strengthen James’s hand. The failure of the militia to act as an effective domestic security force, and the length of time which it had taken for his professional army to assemble in numbers significant enough to subdue the rebel army, convinced James that he needed to increase the British military establishment. In the wake of the rebellion Parliament voted James his ordinary revenue for life, followed by additional customs duties to refurbish the fleet and extra duties on linen, silk and spirits to meet the cost of suppressing Monmouth’s rebellion. The size of James’s army was now almost doubled to nineteen thousand men. Without Parliament’s approval James also redirected funds away from the ineffectual militia to maintaining his professional forces.

  The ease with which this was achieved misled James into thinking that Parliament’s and the nation’s feelings of loyalty towards him were unconditional. He saw also the hand of God in the victory which had been presented to him, a providential blessing on his reign. His confidence boosted, the King pressed on with policies that would soon antagonise the many in Parliament who were opposed to any sort of toleration of Roman Catholicism beyond mere freedom of conscience. Aside from increasing the size of his army (which itself began to cause unease in a nation that had not too long ago endured military rule), James appointed some one hundred Catholic officers in the first year of his reign. Furthermore, he clamped down on discussions in Parliament that urged the enforcement of penal laws against nonconformists, both Protestant and Catholic, and dismissed the Earl of Halifax from the Privy Council when it became clear that he would not support relaxing the test acts. James prorogued his first Parliament, which had been sitting for less than two weeks, after both the Commons and the Lords insisted upon discussing the issue of Catholic officers before voting the King further money. This Parliament was never summoned again.

  Moreover, although there was no more overt opposition to the King after the failure of Monmouth’s rebellion,
beneath the surface there is clear evidence of much residual loyalty to his cause. John Birch, a worsted comber of Combe Raleigh, Devon, when discussing the King’s general pardon to the rebels in March 1686, was reported to have said that he knew of ‘noe Rebellion there hath beene in this case; a Gratious King! I know not where I have any king, or noe, for I have not seen him [meaning Monmouth] this tenne days’.47 Some of the Duke’s followers were sustained by the belief that Monmouth was not dead at all but an impostor had taken his place on the scaffold. In Dorset two men claimed that Monmouth had not been taken and would ‘come againe’ and in Lyme Regis a man was arrested for saying that the Duke lived because ‘an old man with a beard’ had taken his place on the scaffold. In March 1686 a carrier proclaimed that the ‘right King of England is alive’ from Bolton’s market cross, adding as a rider, ‘I hate all Papists.’ Neither was Thomas Dangerfield the last man to be whipped for impersonating the Duke. Charles Floyd was charged at the New Sarum Assize with ‘Pretending himself to be the Duke of Monmouth’, and in October 1686 John Smith was whipped from Newgate to Tyburn for the same offence.

  Other rumours alleged that five men had been chosen to impersonate the Duke, dressed alike and each sworn to total secrecy. One had died on Tower Hill, thus tricking the government, for the ‘Duke of Monmouth is not really dead, but only withdrawn until the harvest is over, and then his friends shall see him again in a much better condition than ever they did yet’.48 The government censor Muddiman, writing on 23 March 1686, complained that there had ‘been lately indicted at the Assizes at York, [some] who have endeavoured to maintain (I cannot say believed) that the late rebel duke of Monmouth was yet alive’. These false reports continued to spread, reaching France, where it was even rumoured that the ‘Man in the Iron Mask’ was, in fact, Monmouth. (The people of Provence were in the habit, at the time that the Man in the Iron Mask was a prisoner in the Ile Marguerite, of calling him ‘Macmouth’, in all probability a corruption of Monmouth).49