Encouraged by this homage,he proclaimed himself King,and went on to Bridgewater.But,here the Government troops,under the EARL OF FEVERSHAM,were close at hand;and he was so dispirited at finding that he made but few powerful friends after all,that it was a question whether he should disband his army and endeavour to escape.It was resolved,at the instance of that unlucky Lord Grey,to make a night attack on the King's army,as it lay encamped on the edge of a morass called Sedgemoor.The horsemen were commanded by the same unlucky lord,who was not a brave man.He gave up the battle almost at the first obstacle-which was a deep drain;and although the poor countrymen,who had turned out for Monmouth,fought bravely with scythes,poles,pitchforks,and such poor weapons as they had,they were soon dispersed by the trained soldiers,and fled in all directions.When the Duke of Monmouth himself fled,was not known in the confusion;but the unlucky Lord Grey was taken early next day,and then another of the party was taken,who confessed that he had parted from the Duke only four hours before.Strict search being made,he was found disguised as a peasant,hidden in a ditch under fern and nettles,with a few peas in his pocket which he had gathered in the fields to eat.The only other articles he had upon him were a few papers and little books:one of the latter being a strange jumble,in his own writing,of charms,songs,recipes,and prayers.He was completely broken.He wrote a miserable letter to the King,beseeching and entreating to be allowed to see him.When he was taken to London,and conveyed bound into the King's presence,he crawled to him on his knees,and made a most degrading exhibition.As James never forgave or relented towards anybody,he was not likely to soften towards the issuer of the Lyme proclamation,so he told the suppliant to prepare for death.
On the fifteenth of July,one thousand six hundred and eighty-five,this unfortunate favourite of the people was brought out to die on Tower Hill.The crowd was immense,and the tops of all the houses were covered with gazers.He had seen his wife,the daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch,in the Tower,and had talked much of a lady whom he loved far better-the LADY HARRIET WENTWORTH-who was one of the last persons he remembered in this life.Before laying down his head upon the block he felt the edge of the axe,and told the executioner that he feared it was not sharp enough,and that the axe was not heavy enough.On the executioner replying that it was of the proper kind,the Duke said,'I pray you have a care,and do not use me so awkwardly as you used my Lord Russell.'The executioner,made nervous by this,and trembling,struck once and merely gashed him in the neck.Upon this,the Duke of Monmouth raised his head and looked the man reproachfully in the face.Then he struck twice,and then thrice,and then threw down the axe,and cried out in a voice of horror that he could not finish that work.
The sheriffs,however,threatening him with what should be done to himself if he did not,he took it up again and struck a fourth time and a fifth time.Then the wretched head at last fell off,and James,Duke of Monmouth,was dead,in the thirty-sixth year of his age.He was a showy,graceful man,with many popular qualities,and had found much favour in the open hearts of the English.
The atrocities,committed by the Government,which followed this Monmouth rebellion,form the blackest and most lamentable page in English history.The poor peasants,having been dispersed with great loss,and their leaders having been taken,one would think that the implacable King might have been satisfied.But no;he let loose upon them,among other intolerable monsters,a COLONEL KIRK,who had served against the Moors,and whose soldiers-called by the people Kirk's lambs,because they bore a lamb upon their flag,as the emblem of Christianity-were worthy of their leader.The atrocities committed by these demons in human shape are far too horrible to be related here.It is enough to say,that besides most ruthlessly murdering and robbing them,and ruining them by making them buy their pardons at the price of all they possessed,it was one of Kirk's favourite amusements,as he and his officers sat drinking after dinner,and toasting the King,to have batches of prisoners hanged outside the windows for the company's diversion;and that when their feet quivered in the convulsions of death,he used to swear that they should have music to their dancing,and would order the drums to beat and the trumpets to play.The detestable King informed him,as an acknowledgment of these services,that he was 'very well satisfied with his proceedings.'But the King's great delight was in the proceedings of Jeffreys,now a peer,who went down into the west,with four other judges,to try persons accused of having had any share in the rebellion.The King pleasantly called this 'Jeffreys's campaign.'
The people down in that part of the country remember it to this day as The Bloody Assize.
It began at Winchester,where a poor deaf old lady,MRS.ALICIA LISLE,the widow of one of the judges of Charles the First (who had been murdered abroad by some Royalist assassins),was charged with having given shelter in her house to two fugitives from Sedgemoor.