I was in Devon last weekend and went to Lyme Regis where, in June 1685, the ill-fated James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, rebellion began. I walked along Monmouth Beach, marvelling at the huge ammonite fossils that can be seen there at low tide.
Lyme Regis Museum has a small display about the story, including a wooden panel from the bed that Monmouth slept in (pic above).
In many ways Monmouth's attempt was the exact precursor to what his cousin, William Prince of Orange, would succeed with just over three years later in winter 1688. Monmouth was the bastard son of King Charles II, and was something of a megastar of his era, who believed that he should be the next King. However, the King's brother - James - got to the crown first. So Monmouth tried to oust him, and for a few days that June it looked like the plan just might work.
During the rebellion, he planned to open a new front in Ireland - Monmouth sent two of his key men, Venner and Parsons, back to Holland to organise boatloads of arms to equip an invasion of Carrickfergus which were to be landed there by a John Waltere. The army forts at Cork, Kinsale, Limerick and Dublin were all ready to rise in mutiny. But it all failed.
"... J. Tillier, in his examination, stated that Colonel Venner and Major Parsons ... were sent by Ferguson, Major Wade, Captain Tyley, and others, to Amsterdam, to buy arms and ammunition to send to England.
John Waltere, pilot to the Duke of Monmouth's ship, was to pilot those ships that were to carry the arms for Ireland, and to land near Carrickfergus, and there to take a castle. Waltere said there would be men to receive the arms.
Some Cromwellian officers were to take the forts of Cork and Kinsale and the city of Limerick by treachery; and if his Majesty drew his forces from Scotland, they would rise in Cheshire; and if the King sent his forces to Ireland, London would rise.
Mr. Hooke was sent for this purpose; and all the prisoners were to be set at liberty, and to assist in setting up a commonwealth. They looked to have all the arms and ammunition in the storehouse at Dublin. There was a plan about blowing up a magazine. John Cragg was to kill the King at Windsor, or at the Lord Mayor's show, and have for doing the deed 1000l. from Ferguson..."
After the rebellion failed, the unimaginable cruelties of King James II’s army in 1685 sent a clear message to continental Europe that James had to be deposed. Some of those cruelties were inflicted by renowned figures who would eventually defect to William of Orange, such as Percy Kirke:
"... But they were so called some time before Kirke's cruelties in the west. When Jeffreys opened his bloody commission at Taunton, this regiment composed his guards, and was cantoned on the piece of ground west of the castle, which has, ever since, been called Tangier, from the name of this regiment.
The colonel, one day, invited his officers to an entertainment, and, after dinner, commanded thirty men to be executed, by ten at a time, while the glass went round in three healths; one to the king, the second to the queen, and the third to judge Jeffreys, of whom news was just then received, that he was to try the rebels. When, in the last agonies of departing life, the feet of the dying were observed to shake, he would cry out, “They shall have music to their dancing" and commanded the trumpets to sound, and the drums to beat, surrounded by the soldiers, with colours flying." "This," observes bishop Burnet, "was both so illegal and inhuman, that it might have been expected that some notice would have been taken of it ;" whereas Kirke was only chid for it.
But the most shocking outrage against all decency, generosity, and humanity, with which, if it be true, the character of colonel Kirke is blackened, is his conduct to a beautiful young woman, whom he is said to have decoyed to his embraces, with the promise of sparing the life of a person, endeared to her by blood or affection, and to have conducted, in the morning, to see the person, for whom she had made the sacrifice of her virtue, hanging on the sign-post of the inn, where he had glutted his brutal lust. Shame, remorse, and distraction are said to have seized the unhappy, injured fair one, and she died within a few days…
… One writer says, that the young woman yielded herself to Kirke's desires, for the sake of her husband, another for her father, and a third for her brother; and though jealousy might have urged the execution of a husband, yet, in case the person were a father or a brother, it is not to be conceived what end his death would have answered: that it is incredible, that a man who could have committed such an inhuman action, such a wanton barbarity, could afterwards have been consulted with the Sidneys and the Cavendishes, on the plan for the revolution; or that the glorious William could have armed such a wretch in the cause of LIBERTY ..."
Even though a failure, the Duke of Monmouth provided a template to show King James’s son-in-law, William Prince of Orange, what he needed to do to succeed in 1688. William arrived three years later, just a few miles along the same coastline, with a similar flag, and a similar Declaration, and the same intent – but with the biggest Armada ever assembled.
As Tony Robinson says in the video below:
"... Such brutal retribution did little more than prove everyone's worst fears about the tyrant James II... Monmouth's mistake was to rebel to early. Instead, he laid the stage for the real winners of this whole saga, his cousins, William and Mary... the joint monarchs were crowned in 1689 and swiftly signed the Bill of Rights. The Glorious Revolution had occurred... enshrined the notion that never again could the monarch rule without the will of its people ... I believe that, above all, they followed the Duke because they wanted to see a Britain that was ruled by Parliament, not by an absolute monarch. And in that respect their legacy is very great indeed..."
• Lots more detail about Lyme Regis is online here.
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