stoop to ask his life. Both the prisoners him from Whitehall. But they soon were sent to the Tower by water. There discovered that, though he would gladly was no tumult; but many thousands of have purchased his life by renouncing people, with anxiety and sorrow in their the religion of which he had professed faces, tried to catch a glimpse of the himself in an especial manner the decaptives. The Duke's resolution failed fender, yet, if he was to die, he would as soon as he had left the royal pre- as soon die without their absolution as sence. On his way to his prison he with it.* bemoaned himself, accused his followers, and abjectly implored the intercession of Dartmouth. "I know, my Lord, that you loved my father. For his sake, for God's sake, try if there be any room for mercy." Dartmouth replied that the King had spoken the truth, and that a subject who assumed the regal title excluded himself from all hope of pardon.* Nor were Ken and Turner much better pleased with his frame of mind. The doctrine of nonresistance was, in their view, as in the view of most of their brethren, the distinguishing badge of the Anglican Church. The two Bishops insisted on Monmouth's owning that, in drawing the sword against the government, he had committed a great sin; and, on this point, they found him obstinately heterodox. Nor was this his only heresy. He maintained that his connection with Lady Wentworth was blameless in the sight of God. He had been married, he said, when a child. He had never cared for his Soon after Monmouth had been lodged in the Tower, he was informed that his wife had, by the royal command, been sent to see him. She was accompanied by the Earl of Clarendon, Keeper of the Privy Seal. Her husband received her very coldly, and addressed Duchess. The happiness which he had almost all his discourse to Clarendon, whose intercession he earnestly implored. Clarendon held out no hopes; and that same evening two prelates, Turner, Bishop of Ely, and Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, arrived at the Tower with a solemn message from the King. It was Monday night. On Wednesday morning Monmouth was to die. He was greatly agitated. The blood left his cheeks; and it was some time before he could speak. Most of the short time which remained to him he wasted in vain attempts to obtain, if not a pardon, at least a respite. He wrote piteous letters to the King and to several courtiers, but in vain. Some Roman Catholic divines were sent to James to the Prince of Orange, July 14. 1685; Dutch despatch of the same date; Dartmouth's note on Burnet, i. 646.; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. (1848.) A copy of this Diary, from July 1685 to Sept. 1690, is among the Mackintosh papers. To the rest I was allowed access by the kindness of the Warden of All Souls' College, where the original MS. is deposited. The Delegates of the Press of the University of Oxford have since published the whole, in six substantial volumes, which will, I am afraid, find little favour with readers who seek only for amusement, but which will always be useful as materials for history. (1857.) not found at home he had sought in a round of loose amours, condemned by religion and morality. Henrietta had reclaimed him from a life of vice. To her he had been strictly constant. They had, by common consent, offered up fervent prayers for the divine guidance. After those prayers they had found their affection for each other strengthened; and they could then no longer doubt that, in the sight of God, they were a wedded pair. The Bishops were so much scandalised by this view of the conjugal relation that they refused to administer the sacrament to the prisoner. All that they could obtain from him was a promise that, during the single night which still remained to him, he would pray to be enlightened if he were in error. On the Wednesday morning, at his particular request, Doctor Thomas Tenison, who then held the vicarage of Saint Martin's, and, in that important cure, had obtained the high esteem of the public, came to the Tower. From Tenison, whose opinions were known to be moderate, the Duke expected more ii. 37. Orig. Mem.; Van Citters, July 14 * Buccleuch MS.; Life of James the Second, 1685; Gazette de France, Aug. 4. The hour drew near: all hope was over; and Monmouth had passed from pusillanimous fear to the apathy of despair. His children were brought to his room that he might take leave of them, and were followed by his wife. He spoke to her kindly, but without emotion. Though she was a woman of great strength of mind, and had little cause to love him, her misery was such that none of the bystanders could refrain from weeping. He alone was unmoved.† indulgence than Ken and Turner were die a Protestant of the Church of Engdisposed to show. But Tenison, what- land." The Bishops interrupted him, ever might be his sentiments concern- and told him that, unless he acknowing nonresistance in the abstract, ledged resistance to be sinful, he was thought the late rebellion rash and no member of their church. He went wicked, and considered Monmouth's on to speak of his Henrietta. She was, notion respecting marriage as a most he said, a young lady of virtue and dangerous delusion. Monmouth was honour. He loved her to the last, and obstinate. He had prayed, he said, for he could not die without giving utterthe divine direction. His sentiments ance to his feelings. The Bishops remained unchanged; and he could not again interfered, and begged him not doubt that they were correct. Tenison's to use such language. Some altercation exhortations were in a milder tone than followed. The divines have been acthose of the Bishops. But he, like cused of dealing harshly with the dying them, thought that he should not be man. But they appear to have only justified in administering the Eucharist discharged what, in their view, was a to one whose penitence was of so un- sacred duty. Monmouth knew their satisfactory a nature.* principles, and, if he wished to avoid their importunity, should have dispensed with their attendance. Their general arguments against resistance had no effect on him. But when they reminded him of the ruin which he had brought on his brave and loving followers, of the blood which had been shed, of the souls which had been sent unprepared to the great account, he was touched, and said, in a softened voice, "I do own that. I am sorry that it ever happened." They prayed with him long and fervently; and he joined It was ten o'clock. The coach of the in their petitions till they invoked a Lieutenant of the Tower was blessing on the King. He remained cution. ready. Monmouth requested silent. "Sir,” said one of the Bishops, his spiritual advisers to accompany him" do you not pray for the King with to the place of execution; and they us?" Monmouth paused some time, consented: but they told him that, in their judgment, he was about to die in a perilous state of mind, and that, if they attended him, it would be their duty to exhort him to the last. As he passed along the ranks of the guards he saluted them with a smile, and he mounted the scaffold with a firm tread. Tower Hill was covered up to the chimney tops with an innumerable multitude of gazers, who, in awful silence, broken only by sighs and the noise of weeping, listened for the last accents of the darling of the people. "I shall say little," he began. come here, not to speak, but to die. His exe and, after an internal struggle, exclaimed "Amen." But it was in vain that the prelates implored him to address to the soldiers and to the people a few words on the duty of obedience to the government. "I will make no speeches," he exclaimed. "Only ten words, my Lord." He turned away, called his servant, and put into the man's hand a toothpick case, the last token of ill starred love. "Give it," he said, "to that person." He then accosted John Ketch the executioner, a wretch who had butchered many brave and noble "Ivictims, and whose name has, during a I century and a half, been vulgarly given to all who have succeeded him in his odious office.* 66 Here," said the Duke, * Buccleuch MS.; Life of James the Second, ii. 37, 38. Orig. Mem.; Burnet, i. 645.; Tenison's account in Kennet, iii. 432. ed. 1719. † Buccleuch MS. * The name of Ketch was often associated 'are six guineas for you. Do not hack | regarded as a martyr who had died for me as you did my Lord Russell. I the Protestant religion. The head and have heard that you struck him three body were placed in a coffin covered or four times. My servant will give with black velvet, and were laid priyou some more gold if you do the work vately under the communion table of well." He then undressed, felt the Saint Peter's Chapel in the Tower. edge of the axe, expressed some fear Within four years the pavement of the that it was not sharp enough, and laid chancel was again disturbed, and hard his head on the block. The divines in by the remains of Monmouth were laid the meantime continued to ejaculate the remains of Jeffreys. In truth there with great energy; "God accept your is no sadder spot on the earth than that repentance! God accept your imperfect little cemetery. Death is there assorepentance!" ciated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's, with genius and virtue, with public veneration and imperishable renown; not, as in our humblest churches and churchyards, with every thing that is most endearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted fame. Thither have been carried, through successive ages, by the rude hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the bleeding relics of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts. Thither was borne, before the window where Jane Grey was praying, the mangled corpse of Guilford Dudley. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and Protector of the realm, reposes there by the brother whom he murdered. There has mouldered away the headless trunk of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Cardinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a better age, and to have died in a better cause. There are laid John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Lord High Admiral, and Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Lord High Treasurer. There, too, is another Essex, on whom nature and fortune had lavished all their bounties in vain, and whom valour, The hangman addressed himself to his office. But he had been disconcerted by what the Duke had said. The first blow inflicted only a slight wound. The Duke struggled, rose from the block, and looked reproachfully at the executioner. The head sank down once more. The stroke was repeated again and again; but still the neck was not severed, and the body continued to move. Yells of rage and horror rose from the crowd. Ketch flung down the axe with a curse. "I cannot do it," he said; "my heart fails me." "Take up the axe, man," cried the sheriff. "Fling him over the rails," roared the mob. At length the axe was taken up. Two more blows extinguished the last remains of life; but a knife was used to separate the head from the shoulders. The crowd was wrought up to such an ecstasy of rage that the executioner was in danger of being torn in pieces, and was conveyed away under a strong guard.* In the meantime many handkerchiefs were dipped in the Duke's blood; for by a large part of the multitude he was with that of Jeffreys in the lampoons of those days. "While Jeffreys on the bench, Ketch on the gibbet sits," says one poet. In the year which followed Monmouth's execution Ketch was turned out of his office for insulting one of the Sheriffs, and was succeeded by a butcher named Rose. But in four months Rose himself was hanged at Tyburn, and Ketch was reinstated. Luttrell's Diary, Jan. 20. and May 28. 1686. See grace, genius, royal favour, popular a curious note by Dr. Grey, on Hudibras, part iii. canto ii. line 1534. *Account of the execution of Monmouth, signed by the divines who attended him. Buc cleuch MS.; Burnet, i. 646.; Van Citters, July 17. 1685; Luttrell's Diary; Evelyn's Diary, July 15.; Barillon, July 19 applause, conducted to an early and ignominious doom. Not far off sleep two chiefs of the great house of Howard, Thomas, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and Philip, eleventh Earl of Arundel. Here and there, among the thick graves of unquiet and aspiring statesmen, liemore | to save the Protestant hero. The vulgar delicate sufferers; Margaret of Salisbury, long continued, at every important the last of the proud name of Planta- crisis, to whisper that the time was at genet, and those two fair Queens who hand, and that King Monmouth would perished by the jealous rage of Henry. soon show himself. In 1686, a knave Such was the dust with which the dust who had pretended to be the Duke, and of Monmouth mingled.* had levied contributions in several vilYet a few months, and the quiet lages of Wiltshire, was apprehended, village of Toddington, in Bedfordshire, and whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. witnessed a still sadder funeral. Near In 1698, when England had long enthat village stood an ancient and stately|joyed_constitutional freedom under a hall, the seat of the Wentworths. The new dynasty, the son of an innkeeper transept of the parish church had long passed himself on the yeomanry of been their burial place. To that burial Sussex as their beloved Monmouth, and place, in the spring which followed the defrauded many who were by no means death of Monmouth, was borne the of the lowest class. Five hundred pounds coffin of the young Baroness Wentworth were collected for him. The farmers of Nettlestede. Her family reared a provided him with a horse. Their wives sumptuous mausoleum over her re- sent him baskets of chickens and ducks, mains: but a less costly memorial of and were lavish, it was said, of favours her was long contemplated with far of a more tender kind; for, in gallantry deeper interest. Her name, carved by at least, the counterfeit was a not unthe hand of him whom she loved too worthy representative of the original. well, was, a few years ago, still dis- When this impostor was thrown into cernible on a tree in the adjoining prison for his fraud, his followers mainpark. tained him in luxury. Several of them appeared at the bar to countenance him when he was tried at the Horsham assizes. So long did this delusion last that, when George the Third had been some years on the English throne, Voltaire thought it necessary gravely to confute the hypothesis that the man in the iron mask was the Duke of Monmouth.* His memory by the common people. It was not by Lady Wentworth alone that the memory of Monmouth was cherished with idolatrous cherished fondness. His hold on the hearts of the people lasted till the generation which had seen him had passed away. Ribands, buckles, and other trifling articles of apparel which he had worn, were treasured up as precious relics by those who had fought under him at Sedgemoor. Old men who long survived him desired, when they were dying, that these trinkets might be buried with them. One button of gold thread which narrowly escaped this fate may still be seen at a house which overlooks the field of battle. Nay, such was the devotion of the people to their unhappy favourite that, in the face of the strongest evidence by which the fact of a death was ever verified, many continued to cherish a hope that he was still living, and that he would again appear in arms. person, it was said, who was remarkably like Monmouth had sacrificed himself A *I cannot refrain from expressing my disgust at the barbarous stupidity which has transformed this most interesting little church into the likeness of a meeting house in a manufacturing town. It is, perhaps, a fact scarcely less remarkable that, to this day, the inhabitants of some parts of the West of England, when any bill affecting their interests is before the House of Lords, France, Nov. 2. 1686; Letter from Humphrey Wanley, dated Aug. 25. 1698, in the Aubrey Collection; Voltaire, Dict. Phil. There are, in the Pepysian Collection, several ballads present him as living, and predict his speedy written after Monmouth's death, which rereturn. I will give two specimens; *Observator, August 1. 1685; Gazette de "Though this is a dismal story Again: "Then shall Monmouth in his glories As are vended everywhere. think themselves entitled to claim the that their constancy is a vice and not help of the Duke of Buccleuch, the a virtue. descendant of the unfortunate leader for whom their ancestors bled. diers in Kirke. While the execution of Monmouth occupied the thoughts of the Cruelties Londoners, the counties which of the solhad risen against the govern- the West. ment were enduring all that a ferocious soldiery could inflict. Feversham had been summoned to the court, where honours and rewards which he little deserved awaited him. He was made a Knight of the Garter and Captain of the first and most lucrative troop of Life Guards: but Court and City laughed at his military exploits; and the wit of Buckingham gave forth its last feeble flash at the expense of the general who had won a battle in bed.* Feversham left in command at Bridgewater Colonel Percy Kirke, a military adventurer whose vices had been developed by the worst of all schools, Tangier. Kirke had during some years commanded the garrison of that town, and had been constantly employed in hostilities against tribes of foreign barbarians, ignorant of the laws which regulate the warfare of civilised and Christian nations. Within the ramparts of his fortress he was a despotic prince. The only check on his tyranny was the fear of being called to account by a distant and a careless government. He might therefore safely proceed to the most audacious excesses of rapacity, licentiousness, and cruelty. He lived with boundless dissoluteness, and procured by extortion the means of indul The history of Monmouth would alone suffice to refute the imputation of inconstancy which is so frequently thrown on the common people. The common people are sometimes inconstant; for they are human beings. But that they are inconstant as compared with the educated classes, with aristocracies, or with princes, may be confidently denied. It would be easy to name demagogues whose popularity has remained undiminished while sovereigns and parliaments have withdrawn their confidence from a long succession of statesmen. When Swift had survived his faculties many years, the Irish populace still continued to light bonfires on his birthday, in commemoration of the services which they fancied that he had rendered to his country when his mind was in full vigour. While seven administrations were raised to power and hurled from it in consequence of court intrigues or of changes in the sentiments of the higher classes of society, the profligate Wilkes retained his hold on the affections of a rabble whom he pillaged and ridiculed. Politicians, who, in 1807, had sought to curry favour with George the Third by defending Caroline of Brunswick, were not ashamed, in 1820, to curry favour with George the Fourth by persecuting her. But in 1820, as in 1807, the whole body of working men was fana-gence. tically devoted to her cause. So it was with Monmouth. In 1680 he had been adored alike by the gentry and by the peasantry of the West. In 1685 he came again. To the gentry he had become an object of aversion: but by the peasantry he was still loved with a love strong as death, with a love not to be extinguished by misfortunes or faults, by the flight from Sedgemoor, by the letter from Ringwood, or by the tears and abject supplications at Whitehall. The charge which may with justice be brought against the common people is, not that they are inconstant, but that they almost invariably choose their favourite so ill No goods could be sold till Kirke had had the refusal of them. No question of right could be decided till Kirke had been bribed. Once, merely from a malignant whim, he staved all the wine in a vintner's cellar. On another occasion he drove all the Jews from Tangier. Two of them he sent to the Spanish Inquisition, which forthwith burned them. Under this iron domination scarce a complaint was heard; for hatred was effectually kept down by terror. Two persons who had been refractory were found murdered; and it was universally believed that they had been slain by Kirke's order. * London Gazette, August 3. 1685; the Battle of Sedgemoor, a Farce. |