Monmouth Rebellion (1685): Sedgemoor and the Bloody Assizes

The Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 was an attempt by James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, to seize the English throne from his uncle, the Catholic King James II. Raised among the Protestant weavers and farmers of the West Country, the rising ended in defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor and in a wave of harsh trials known as the Bloody Assizes.

Background

Monmouth was the eldest illegitimate son of Charles II, born in 1649 to Lucy Walter. Handsome and popular, he became a hero to many Protestants who feared that Charles’s brother James, an open Catholic, would one day be king. During the Exclusion Crisis of 1679–1681, Whig politicians tried to bar James from the succession, and some promoted Monmouth as an alternative heir.

The campaign failed. After the Rye House Plot of 1683, a conspiracy against Charles and James, Monmouth fell from favour and went into exile in the Dutch Republic. When Charles II died on 6 February 1685, James II succeeded peacefully. Exiles in the Netherlands planned a double rising: the Earl of Argyll in Scotland and Monmouth in England.

The rising

Argyll’s rebellion in Scotland collapsed quickly in May and June 1685. Monmouth landed at Lyme Regis in Dorset on 11 June 1685 with about 80 companions and a small stock of weapons. He issued a declaration denouncing James and, within days, thousands of volunteers joined him, many of them cloth workers, craftsmen and small farmers from Somerset, Dorset and Devon, often from nonconformist Protestant communities.

At Taunton on 20 June Monmouth had himself proclaimed king. His army, which reached perhaps 6,000 to 7,000 men at its height, was enthusiastic but poorly armed; some carried scythes fixed on poles. He marched towards Bristol but turned back at Keynsham, fought an inconclusive skirmish at Norton St Philip on 27 June, and then fell back on Bridgwater as desertions grew.

The Battle of Sedgemoor

The royal army, commanded by the Earl of Feversham with John Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough, as his second in command, camped near the village of Westonzoyland. Monmouth decided to risk a surprise night attack across the open moor on 5–6 July 1685.

The attack went wrong. The rebels were delayed crossing the drainage ditches, a shot alerted the royal camp, and Monmouth’s men found themselves stopped by a deep ditch called the Bussex Rhine. Royal infantry and artillery shattered them at dawn and cavalry cut down the fleeing men. Perhaps 1,000 rebels died in the battle and pursuit, while royal losses were far lighter. Monmouth fled the field.

Capture and execution

Monmouth was found on 8 July hiding in a ditch near Ringwood in Hampshire, disguised in rough clothes. Taken to London, he pleaded with James II for his life, offering even to become a Catholic, but the king refused. He was beheaded on Tower Hill on 15 July 1685. The executioner, Jack Ketch, needed several blows, a gruesome detail widely reported at the time.

The Bloody Assizes

In late August and September 1685 a special commission headed by Lord Chief Justice George Jeffreys tried rebels and suspected sympathisers at Winchester, Dorchester, Exeter, Taunton and Wells. At Winchester the elderly Alice Lisle was condemned for sheltering two fugitives and was beheaded on 2 September.

More than 1,000 prisoners came before the courts. Estimates of those executed vary, commonly from about 150 to more than 300; bodies were displayed in towns and villages across the West Country. Around 800 to 850 more were sentenced to transportation and sold into servitude in the West Indies. Jeffreys was soon rewarded with the post of Lord Chancellor.

Timeline

• 1685, 6 February: Charles II dies; his Catholic brother becomes James II.
• 1685, 11 June: Monmouth lands at Lyme Regis in Dorset.
• 1685, 20 June: Monmouth is proclaimed king at Taunton.
• 1685, 27 June: Skirmish at Norton St Philip.
• 1685, 6 July: Monmouth’s army is defeated at Sedgemoor in a night attack that fails at dawn.
• 1685, 15 July: Monmouth is beheaded on Tower Hill.
• 1685, late August to September: The Bloody Assizes in the West Country.

Consequences

In the short term the rising strengthened James II. Parliament voted him money, and he used the emergency to enlarge the standing army and appoint Catholic officers, which alarmed many of his Protestant subjects. The severity of the Bloody Assizes damaged the king’s reputation and became part of the case against him three years later, when the Glorious Revolution drove him from the throne. Jeffreys was arrested while trying to flee in 1688 and died in the Tower of London in 1689.

Why it matters

The Monmouth Rebellion was the last serious popular rising in England fought with field armies. Its failure, and the cruelty of the punishment that followed, shaped how many Protestants viewed James II and helped prepare the ground for the revolution of 1688 and the English Bill of Rights.