William Phippen, a 16-year-old cloth dyer from the parish of Hawkchurch, made an unlikely rebel when he chose to be part of the foolish, comic and ultimately tragic story of the Duke of Monmouth’s attempt to overthrow the King of England in 1685. William lived in a dangerous time. None in his family - our family - survived unscarred by the plagues, famine, slavery, civil war, rebellion and invasion that swept through the counties of Devon and Dorset in the 17th century. Most were innocent victims, wanting nothing more than to be left in peace in their small villages and on their tiny farms. Not so William, who might have best left Monmouth’s call unanswered.
The rebellion broke out just 34 years after the end of the English Civil War, which was the bloodiest conflict ever waged on British soil.
Now mostly lost to popular memory, the Civil War was fought between Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell, and King Charles I. At a time when the population of England was just 4.4 million, over 200,000 soldiers and civilians lost their lives; 85,000 were made homeless; and the fighting destroyed or badly damaged more than 200 towns and villages.
The war ended in 1651 with the capture and execution of the King and the establishment by Cromwell of a republic. The republic collapsed nine years later, after Cromwell’s death. Parliament then restored the monarchy, inviting King Charles’ son to return from exile in Europe to be crowned as King Charles II.
Hawkchurch suffered during that war. The parish changed hands numerous times, alternating between Parliamentarians and Royalists. Whether occupying or just passing through, armies on both sides lived off the land, raiding barns, kitchens and livestock.
The nearest market town, Axminster, three miles away, was burned to the ground by Parliamentarians, leaving only the old stone church still standing. The port of Lyme Regis, six miles from Hawkchurch, was besieged by Royalists for two months before it was saved by a Parliamentarian army that paused on the way to battle Royalist troops encamped on a Hawkchurch farm.
Local legend claims Hawkchurch played a role in the very last days of the war, when King Charles’ son, the future King Charles II, hid in a local manor house while trying to escape to France. Parliamentarian forces were close behind him, arriving just moments after he had left. The Parliamentarians tore the manor house apart, destroying an entire wing.
With the restoration of the Monarchy, our ancestors in Hawkchurch rebuilt their farms and workshops and returned to the quiet life they had known before. They soon grew indifferent to the new King and his government in London, except when it came to taxes, and most of all to religion.
Most people in Hawkchurch and the surrounding parishes and towns were devoutly religious puritans. They believed the true word of God was to be found in the English translation of the bible. Most families owned one, even when none in the household could read. This belief gave them a deep loathing and fear of the Roman Catholic church, which still insisted that vernacular bibles written in any language but Latin were sinful, and only priests could interpret and communicate God’s message to his people.
Charles II died in February of 1685. His declared heir was his younger brother, who was crowned as King James II in April of that year. This was controversial, because James was a Catholic. Not since Henry VIII had created the Church of England 150 years earlier had a Catholic sat on the English throne.
Conspiracy theories swept through the countryside, most of them involving plots to bring Catholicism back to the land, force the English to convert, and ban their English-language bibles. People were uneasy.
Some people were more than uneasy - they were rebellious. There was a block in Parliament that had attempted to prevent James becoming King. Amongst these Parliamentarians were fringe members who were now prepared to support James’ overthrow by force.
A small group of conspirators who had fled to Holland after Charles II’s death quickly planned, organised and financed a rebellion. They chose as their champion James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth. Monmouth was Charles II’s illegitimate son and he was a protestant, which together gave him a strong claim to the throne.
Monmouth set sail from Holland on May 30th 1685, just five weeks after James’ coronation, with a hastily assembled invasion force of just 83 sympathisers on three ships. They headed to South West England, believing this is where they would find their strongest support.
As the sun rose on Thursday, June 11th, the residents of the small fishing port of Lyme Regis saw three sailing ships some nine miles to sea, beating against a strong northerly wind to enter the harbour.
Nobody in the town gave the ships a second thought until about 10:00 AM, when the mayor, Gregory Alford, learned that a boat from one of the ships had landed two men on the coast a few miles to the east, bringing news of invasion and rebellion.
While Alford was pondering what to make of this, those around him showed little concern, slipping off to the town’s Bowling Green, where they had a long lunch and a game of bowls, as they did every Thursday afternoon.
The mail arrived at the post office at five-o’clock and with it a newspaper reporting rumours of three heavily armed ships carrying the Duke of Monmouth. Still unsure of himself, the Mayor decided to retire to a tavern to discuss with other town worthies what he should do next. Someone suggested firing a cannon to warn off the ships, which everyone thought a good idea until they remembered the town had no powder or shot.
As the evening neared eight-o-clock Alford and his friends decided to leave the tavern to check on the progress of the ships. The Mayor was dismayed to see they were now within gunshot of the harbour. The ships had lowered four boats which were rowing inshore. Al appeared to be loaded with armed men.
Running back to the safety of the tavern, the Mayor gave the order for the beating of the town drums, which was the signal to call out the militia.
The militia mustered, but when their commander saw 80 fully armed men disembarking on the beach he decided to run away, leaving his troops to their fate. Some of the militiamen decided to join the rebels.
As the rebels marched into Lyme Regis with flags fluttering and Monmouth leading, other locals stepped forward to join them. By the time they reached the marketplace the little army had swollen to over 150.
When he saw this Alford decided that he should flee, and set off on horseback for safety in Exeter, 35 miles to the west. He reached Honiton, the halfway point, at midnight, from where he dashed off a dispatch to the King. That letter travelled to London faster than it would today. It was being read in Parliament less than 36 hours after it had been written.
The mayor of Lyme Regis is not one of the heroes of this story. In his letter he inflated the number of rebels, claiming 300 had landed and these from just one of the three ships, and complaining to the King that his home had doubtless already been plundered.
The atmosphere in Lyme Regis that evening was festive. Men were flocking to join the growing army, lining up to shake Monmouth’s hand while an aide recorded their names. The excitement was tempered a bit when the new recruits were assembled to hear Monmouth read his Declaration to them. It had been written in Holland and turned out to be rambling and long- winded and uninspiring, but even if their attention had wandered during the speech, all those gathered were clear Monmouth had made his case to be king, and with the declaration behind them they returned to the festivities.
On the other hand, it seems there was more panic than celebration amongst the wealthier tradesmen and gentry as word spread of Monmouth’s landing. They had a feeling that nothing good would come from this. Many had suffered in the Civil War and they had no desire to risk their remaining fortunes again. Most locked their doors, buried the family silver and prayed Monmouth would move on. The adventurous few who decided to support the rebellion would soon regret it.
At close to midnight two customs officers slipped out of the town, found horses and headed off to London. They were presented to the King at four-o’clock in the morning on Saturday, after covering 143 miles in just 28 hours. Along the way they passed numbers of men travelling in the opposite direction to join Monmouth. The customs officers claimed they warned all of them they would be better off staying in their beds and the direction they were heading was the right one to be hanged. How accurate they were.
The King called a meeting of Parliament, where the customs officers were presented and the mayor’s letter was read. By Monday, June 15th, two days later, the House of Commons had passed a “Bill of Attainder” condemning Monmouth, placing a reward of £5,000 on his head, dead or alive, and providing £400,000 to the King to pay the cost of defeating the rebels. That afternoon Lord John Churchill, an ancestor of the future Prime Minister Winston Churchill, led the King’s army out of London.
This rebellion would be the first conflict on English soil for which detailed information survives of those who took part, drawn from eight lists compiled for various purposes at the time. This is how we know that a young William Phippen left his family in Hawkchurch to join Monmouth’s army.
We have little knowledge about William before the rebellion. One document reports that he was a dyer. Another document records his age in 1685 as just 16. The parish register records the baptism of William, son of Nicholas and Joan Phippen on May 2, 1667, but this would make William 18 when he joined the rebels.
Others from Hawkchurch joined the rebels too, included Weston Hillary (a soap boiler), John Moore, Nicolas Palmer, John Parris and John Sansome. There was even more support for the rebellion from the other parishes surrounding Hawkchurch, with 13 men joining from Whitechurch Canonicorum, 15 from Wootton Fitzpaine, 23 from Chardstock (including Richard Phippen, who may have been related to William), 24 from Membury, 48 from Thorncombe and an astounding 104 from Axminster.
These and other adventurous souls flocked to Lyme Regis all through Friday and Saturday. By the end of that day Monmouth’s army numbered almost 1,200 men. Each had been given weapons and then allocated to one of four regiments, three named Red, Green and Yellow after the colour of the coats issued to them, and the Duke’s Regiment, named in Monmouth’s honour. They were all assigned to experienced officers tasked with turning them into soldiers as fast as possible.
Despite the growth in his army Monmouth soon had reason to be discouraged. Most of the gentry of the southwest, including some members of Parliament who had been a part of the block opposed to James being crowned king, now declined to be involved. It turned out that many on whom Monmouth had counted were totally by coincidence out of the country.
He was worried too about his lack of horses and men who could ride them. His officers had scoured the countryside, but could muster only about 150 mounts, most of them farm horses, more accustomed to pulling a plow or a cart than being ridden. And his “cavalry” had no experience of gunfire, riding in formation or charging an enemy.
Monmouth also had to contend with the need to feed his small army. Already by Sunday morning roads into Lyme Regis were being blocked by militias, preventing supplies from getting through. Despite the festivities around him, he realised he couldn’t linger in the town much longer.
On Sunday afternoon he ordered an old friend, Lord Gray, to take a group of some 400 men on an overnight march to attack the gathering militia at Bridport, some eight miles away. This first action of the rebellion didn’t go well. The militia opened fire, killing just two of the rebels, but at this Lord Gray panicked, turned around and rode back to Lyme Regis as fast as he could. Only the decisive leadership of a young officer, Major Nathaniel Wade, prevented the rebel army from being routed (Wade, a provincial lawyer with no experience of warfare, turns out to be one of the few admirable people in this story). Monmouth lost 25 men in this skirmish, including 23 who were taken prisoner, but there was some consolation when Wade returned with 30 captured horses.
The drums beat before sunrise the next day, Monday, and by mid-morning Monmouth’s army was marching north toward Axminster, skirting Hawkchurch along the way.
Luck now turned in Monmouth’s favour. From a high hill overlooking Axminster the rebels could see the Devon militia, 4,000 strong, marching toward the town from the west, and the Somerset militia marching from the north. It became a race, which Monmouth won. Without pause Major Wade marched west from the town to meet the Devon militia, which panicked and ran away. When Wade next turned to face the Somerset militia they ran away too.
The rebels marched north, following the retreating Somerset militia and recovering the weapons and clothing discarded by the militia in their haste to get away. This was more good luck for Monmouth. During the day his army had swollen to more than 3,000, and he didn’t have enough weapons for them. The captured equipment proved helpful.
Monmouth’s objective was the town of Taunton in Somerset. He believed the town to be sympathetic to him, and this turned out to be true. When news arrived near midnight onTuesday of his impending arrival the militia packed up and fled as fast as they could, leaving many of their weapons behind. By five-o’clock the next morning residents were breaking into the church where those weapons were stored. They greeted the first of Monmouth’s troops as they arrived in Taunton that afternoon, and mobbed Monmouth when he entered the town the next day, a week after he had landed at Lyme Regis.
These were heady days for the rebellion. There was an almost euphoric atmosphere inside Taunton, the largest and most important town between Exeter and Bristol. Hundreds of men descended on the town to join the rebel army, so many that some had to be sent back home for lack of arms. For a while there was a feeling that anything was possible. That Saturday, June 20th, Monmouth was crowned king.
But even amongst the celebrations there were ominous signs. Many had flocked to Monmouth’s army, but few had any military experience and even fewer were trained as officers. Monmouth had counted on the support of the nobility and gentry of the area, but most were still fast in their homes, at best saying nothing, while others were declaring for King James II. And the groundswell of support Monmouth was expecting from the other counties - Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Surrey and Kent - wasn’t there. This was the support he had been depending on to carry him to London.
And what of King James II’s army? The Devon and Somerset militia may have run away, but the professional soldiers under the leadership of John Churchill would not. Churchill was already in Chard, just 14 miles away, cutting the road between Taunton and Lyme Regis, blocking all hope of further support for Monmouth from the west. Another larger army was mustering to the east, ready to block a march on London.
What to do? Monmouth decided he couldn’t stay in Taunton, where he risked being surrounded and bottled up by the King’s army. Instead he would capture Bristol, in the hope that the people of that town, one of the largest in England, would rise up as had the residents of Taunton just a couple of days before.
The rebels marched out of Taunton on Sunday, June 21st.. Churchill’s cavalry entered the town unopposed two days later. Monmouth had not enough troops to both defend the town and also march on Bristol. It was soon clear to even him that his “kingdom” extended no further than the tail of the ragged army following him up the road. To compound his misery the weather then betrayed him, with sunny skies transformed by torrential rain. The road became a muddy quagmire, frustrating carts, horses and men alike.
Monmouth’s character now became clear. He was no natural leader, he had no operational military experience and he was indecisive, unable to decide what he should do. He captured Bridgwater, ten miles from Taunton, to the cheers of its residents, but immediately abandoned it and marched on. After five days on the road he was within four miles of Bristol, when he decided the town was too strongly held to be attacked and chose instead to backtrack through Wiltshire and on to London.
Monmouth meandered through the countryside for a week, first to Bath, then to Frome, then to Warminster, never quite sure where he should be going next. And all the while the King’s army was growing in strength, tightening a noose around the rebel army, always blocking the way to London and opposing Monmouth wherever he turned.
Through his indecision Monmouth ceded the initiative to the King’s army. There had been no uprisings along the road to London and disillusioned rebels were one by one slipping away. He must have known now that his rebellion already was doomed, less than three weeks after it had started.
On Friday, July 3rd, the rebels marched back into Bridgwater. They had spent 11 days wandering 110 miles in a big circle, returning to the last town where they had found support. This time they were not so well received - people in Bridgwater could already see how this adventure was going to end.
But then along came that miracle Monmouth so longed for. On Sunday afternoon a farm labourer slipped into his camp with the news that the King’s army were haphazardly encamped four miles away. There were paths the rebels could use to come upon the encampment unseen by night, take the professional soldiers by surprise while they were sleeping, and achieve the decisive victory Monmouth needed to recover his fortunes.
And so, in the early hours of the morning of Monday, July 6th, 25 days after Monmouth had landed at Lyme Regis, the rebels and the King’s army met at Sedgemoor.
Some 4,000 rebels slipped out of Bridgwater, William Phippen among them. This night attack was an audacious gamble but could well have succeeded had those rebels all been disciplined and well trained soldiers. But they were not. They were farm labourers, artisans and shopkeepers, many armed with nothing more than pitchforks and scythes. A few had served in the militia and knew how to fire a gun. Very few.
Monmouth’s army marched to within a mile of the royal encampment before they were seen. A sentry fired a pistol, sounding the alarm, and in moments they were thrust into the confusion of battle. In that confusion the discipline and training of Churchill’s professional army counted more than the rebels’ enthusiasm and bravery.
With surprise gone the rebels lost the chance to attack the King’s troops while they were asleep in their beds. Instead Churchill quickly roused his men, formed them into defensive lines and ordered them to fire.
The rebel musketeers fired back, but they were inexperienced and aimed high, shooting above the heads of the enemy opposing them. Soon they were running out of ammunition, just as Churchill’s artillery came into action, blasting holes in their ragged lines. Daylight broke about four-o’clock. That was when Churchill launched his cavalry, first slaughtering the men manning the rebel cannons, then turning on the musketeers and then the other rebels armed only with scythes. Realising that his cause was lost, Monmouth ran away, leaving his followers to their fate.
Their fate was gruesome.
Perhaps 400 rebels had already been killed by musket and cannon fire. The cavalry charges claimed another 1,000. Now, with the battle over, Churchill’s soldiers were struck by blood lust and a thirst for revenge. They committed appalling atrocities as they hunted down and slaughtered the rebels in the surrounding cornfields.
Churchill’s officers ordered local villagers to dig mass graves and to gather bodies for burial. One eyewitness, Adam Wheeler, a drummer in the Wiltshire militia, personally counted 174 in one grave alone. One of the locals told him they had buried 1,384 corpses, but someone else claimed that some of the wounded had been buried amongst the dead too.
A quarter of all the rebels died that terrible Monday. Rotting dismembered bodies were still being discovered in the fields when the autumn harvest began three months later.
For those who survived, the horror had only begun. Survivors were rounded up and locked in the Westonzoyland parish church. Wheeler reported seeing groups of rebels brought in tied together. He saw two rebels wounded in their legs crawling to the church on their hands and knees; one naked but for his drawers; and “another running, being forced along by two horsemen with blows and riding close after him.”
Some 500 rebels were forced into the church. We don’t know how long they were kept there. The conditions were pitiful. All the prisoners had been stripped of their coats and anything else of value and were kept unfed and without water. Amongst them 79 wounded were left untreated and five died overnight. The Churchwarden’s Accounts record that it cost more than 16 shillings to fumigate the church afterwards.
Wheeler described one of the wounded. He had been shot through the shoulder and the belly and left on his back in the sun for ten or 11 hours. The King’s soldiers stripped him of all his clothes and “abused him as a Monmouth Dog.” He eventually struggled to his feet and with the help of a long stick hobbled into the church, where he died.
There is a legend that the church-warden and his daughter that night defied the soldiers to carry buckets of water into the church for the prisoners. If this is true, they saved many lives.
We don’t know if William Phippen was amongst those in that church. The records say he was found wounded at Sedgemoor and dragged from there to Wells, then to Bridgwater and then back to Taunton, where he waited ten weeks in gaol to be brought to trial. One rebel, a surgeon named Henry Pitman, later recalled “. . . I saw many sick and wounded men miserably lamenting the want of chirurgeons to dress their wounds . . . whose lives, perhaps, might have been preserved to this day . . . had we . . . not been constrained, through the cruelty and inhumanity of the King’s soldiers, to expose their wounded and fractured limbs to the violent agitation and shogging of the carts, in our daily marches.”
The army wasn’t interested in preserving lives: it wanted retribution. The King himself had ordered that while the countryside was still in rebellion those “who proclaimed the late Duke of Monmouth King may be hanged without bringing them to a formal trial. The King leaves it therefore to your discretion to proceed in the matter as you shall see cause, but would have some of them made an example for a terror to the rest.”
Examples were made. At least 22 rebels were executed in Westonzoyland that Monday, including two who were dragged out of the church, and and another who was so badly wounded he wasn’t expected to survive through the night.
On Tuesday morning the Wiltshire militia marched out of camp to return home, dragging captured rebels with them, including a terrified and wounded William Phippen. They stopped for the night in Glastonbury, where they hanged six of the rebels from the sign-board of the White Hart pub, “who after as they hung were stripped naked, and soe left hanging there all night.” In Wells they held a church parade, after which the militia hanged another five.
One eyewitness reported a long line of gibbets along the 18-mile road between Weston and Bridgwater, all with hanged rebels dangling.
On Wednesday many rebels were marched back to Taunton. Peter Earle, in his book Monmouth’s Rebels: The Road to Sedgemoor 1685, describes the scene:
The next day Kirke hanged ten more.
These extrajudicial executions only ended when even the most bloodthirsty of the army’s officers admitted that the rebellion was over. By the end of the week they had stopped the hangings and ordered that the gaols be filled instead. The rule of law returned. Now every man accused of treason was entitled to a jury trial and could be executed only if found guilty.
For six weeks the King’s troops scoured the countryside, searching for rebels, sympathisers and anyone looking the least guilty. By September the local gaols were holding some 1,500 accused rebels, far beyond their capacity. We don’t have any eyewitness accounts of the gaols where the wounded William Phippen was held, but we do have descriptions from others.
Conditions were appalling. The gaolers were paid one and a half pence a day, about a shilling a week, for each prisoner under their care. The gaolers took their salaries from this, leaving little for the prisoners’ food and upkeep. Most of the rebels were hungry all the time.
In Ilminster one man was “shut up in the ward, where we lay fourteen of us in one room, mostly on the floor, as close as we could lie one by another.” When this prisoner refused to pay “rent” to the gaolors, he was handcuffed and placed in the “inward ward amonst Monmouth’s men, where at night . . . There was no room for us to lie down.” He remained in those handcuffs for five weeks.
Nineteen men were kept in one room at the Dorchester gaol. In Bath 28 prisoners were held in a little room for 14 weeks, some sleeping on floorboards, others on straw. Clothes went unchanged, men went unwashed and skin crawled with lice. Amongst this filth and overcrowding typhus, smallpox and other disease ran wild.
In his excellent book The Monmouth Rebellion: A Social History, W. MacDonald Wigfield quotes the surgeon Joseph Winter, witness to hundreds of rebels in Ilchester gaol, “. . . many of them being dangerously wounded, which for want of looking after and due dressing, began to be very offensive, and their putrid soars were very probable to have bred such infectious diseases.” Winter mentions treating a prisoner wounded in the cheek and jawbone, two prisoners with hands shattered by bullets, a man with shattered lungs, a rebel with a skull badly cut by sabre blows and two men with broken arms. He mentions two other rebels that had been tortured, their hands burned to the bones, “soe that the flesh did Mortifie and fall away in pieces.”
Colonel Kirke’s bloody hunt for escaped rebels has become legend, passed down over generations in Devon, Dorset and Somerset. As Earle writes, “To him was to be attributed every injustice and every brutality, every rape, theft and plunder, every murder and degradation that was to be done or said to be done by all the King’s soldiers and loyal subjects in the west.” One eyewitness recorded how “the King’s soldiers paid only for what they wished to pay, took the best of everything and had ‘made one entire bawdy house of ye West of England, forcing and enticing the wives and daughters of such as were accounted nonconformists.’”
Kirke is still remembered today as “the cruellest soldier in English history,” a reputation built on stories that have grown in the telling. One claims he ordered the regimental band to play a tune in time with the jerking bodies of the hanged. Another that he forced a girl to sleep with him to save her father’s life, only for her to get out of bed in the morning to find her father hanging outside the window.
Some 2,000 rebels may have fled the battlefield after Sedgemoor. Most tried to make their way back home, hiding by day, travelling by night, ever watching for army patrols and roadblocks. Rewards were offered for their capture. Eight fugitives were rounded up and delivered to the army by their neighbours in Axminster, in return for a reward of £1 per rebel, plus fivepence for the rope that bound them.
A rebel from Colyton evaded the soldiers to reach the sanctuary of his home. When soldiers arrived to search the house he escaped out the back and hid among the cabbages. When she was asked, one of his tiny children innocently told the soldiers where he was.
Another rebel hid under the wheel of a water-mill while the soldiers searched his family’s property. They were leaving when one of them spied something white under the wheel, which turned out to be the rebel’s shirt sleeve.
A week after Sedgemoor soldiers found Weston Hillary, a soap boiler, hiding near his home in Hawkchurch. Wounded trying to escape capture, he was brought to Lyme Regis to appear before the magistrates. Under questioning he surrendered the names of three other fugitives. The magistrates ordered him sent to Dorchester Gaol and from there he was taken to Taunton to stand trial, where he was reunited with his neighbour William Phippen.
There were one or two well remembered escapes. Richard Cogan, the wealthy owner of Coaxden Hall in Chardstock, close to Hawkchurch, evaded the soldiers by hiding upstairs in the Green Dragon public house in Axminster. Elizabeth Gray, the owner’s daughter, hid him underneath the feather mattress on her parents’ bed, arranging the bed sheets so that there was no sign of him. Soldiers searched the room, even looking under the bed, but found nothing. Cogan remained in hiding until a general amnesty in 1686, and then returned to Axminster and married Elizabeth.
Throughout the campaign Major Wade had been the one officer among the rebels who stood out for his leadership, discipline and bravery. Now in defeat he was no different. He kept his men together in an orderly retreat from the battlefield and marched 150 of them back from Sedgemoor to Bridgport, where he said goodbye and wished them luck. He then gathered up 20 or so riders and led them north toward the Bristol Channel. They descended upon the port of Ilfracombe, captured a ship and sailed for Holland. Two navy frigates spotted the ship, forcing Wade to beach it and attempt to escape by land. He eventually encountered a local woman named Grace Howe, who led him to shelter at a nearby farm.
It became general knowledge in the parish of Brendon that Wade was sheltering there, but the secret was kept from the authorities until the Rector, no friend of the parishioners, attempted to capture him, hoping to claim a £100 reward. Wade escaped through a back door of the farmhouse while the Rector and his henchmen came through the front, but the rebel was spotted and shot in the back while fleeing. Badly wounded, Wade was taken over rough roads in the back of a horse cart to London to be interrogated and then to await his fate.
Major Wade was ordered to write out a confession. He wrote two, but they were so well crafted that he implicated no one except those he knew to have died in the rebellion or to have been executed (legend tells that sympathisers smuggled in a list of the dead in a load of fresh laundry). He was eventually released and lived into old age, but he never forgot Grace Howe, the woman who had rescued him. She was included in his will.
The Duke of Monmouth was discovered by militiamen just two days after Sedgemoor, hiding alone covered with leaves in a drainage ditch in a field in Dorset, some 55 miles from the battlefield. He was dressed in a shepherd’s clothes, unshaven and hungry, with only a few peas in his pocket.
He was taken to London in a slow procession through the countryside and brought before King James on Monday, July 13th, five days after his capture. Again Monmouth displayed his true character, writing desperate letters to the King and members of the King’s family imploring forgiveness and mercy. He pledged rediscovered loyalty, volunteered to surrender all the names of his accomplices and offered to convert to Catholicism. Witnesses to his meeting with the King described Monmouth as grovelling, begging for his life.
These pleas were wasted. Parliament’s Act of Attainder, passed back on June 15th, proscribed death. No trial was needed, and King James was in no mood for clemency.
Monmouth was executed that Wednesday. It did not go well.
He was escorted to Tower Hill, the traditional site in London of all political executions. There, before a vast crowd of spectators, he met his executioner, the notorious Jack Ketch, whose name was soon to be synonymous with the Devil.
Ketch had badly botched his last beheading, striking three blows before finally severing his victim’s head. Some claimed Ketch had been drunk, others that he was merely cruel.
Monmouth handed over some money to the executioner, saying “Here are six guineas. Pray do your business well. Don’t serve me as you did my Lord Russell. I hear you struck him three or four times.” He handed more money to his servant, to be given to Ketch only if he were to do a good job. The servant kept the money.
As Charles Chenevix Trench describes the scene in his book The Western Rising: An Account of the Rebellion of James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, the Duke then lay down, “but raised himself on his elbow and said, ‘Prithee let me feel the axe - I fear it is not sharp enough.’”
After a quiet prayer Monmouth spread his arms as a signal to Ketch to do his work. The blow when it came only gashed his neck. Monmouth’s body heaved. The second blow did little more damage. Monmouth turned and looked the executioner in the face.
The third blow also failed. Trench claims Ketch threw down his axe, crying out “God damn me! I can do no more. My heart fails me.”
The spectators were horrified. They screamed for Ketch to finish the job and end Monmouth’s pain and misery. The executioner’s fourth attempt failed. So did the fifth. As a witness wrote, he was “fain at last to draw forth his long knife and with it to cut off the remaining part of the neck.”
Another wrote “five Chopps . . . So incens’d the people, that had he not been guarded & got away they would have torne him to pieces.” And a third witness reported “everyone said [Ketch] deserved hanging or beheading with an oyster-knife.” The executioner had to be rescued by armed soldiers.
So died the Duke of Monmouth, who thought himself worthy to be king.
James now ordered trials for the 1,500 prisoners crowding all those Somerset and Wiltshire gaols. He handed responsibility for their trials to the Right Honourable George, Lord Jeffreys, Chief Justice of England. This man was soon another legend in the West Country, becoming known as the “hanging judge,” and the prisoners’ trials immortalised as the “Bloody Assizes” (the Assizes were twice-yearly county court sessions that heard serious cases of crime).
James chose to execute enough of the rebels to set an example never to be forgotten, but others he was prepared to send into exile as indentured labourers in the Americas. However, he and Jeffreys still had to contend with the legal system. Under English common law the prisoners were all entitled to fair trials and unless they pled guilty they could only be convicted of treason upon the evidence of at least two witnesses. It would take far too long to hold 1,500 trials and it was unlikely they could find two witnesses to give evidence against every rebel. The answer was to intimidate and bully as many as possible into confessing and pleading guilty.
The trials started on August 26th in Winchester in Hampshire. One of the first prisoners brought before the court was Dame Alice Lisle, a deaf widow in her 70s. She was charged with harbouring a rebel, which in itself was treason. She argued that she did not know at the time that her guest had been in Monmouth’s army - she had thought him to be merely a dissenting or non-conformist preacher. The jury wavered, but Jeffreys urged them to pass a verdict of Guilty, which they eventually did. Jeffreys congratulated them on their decision, saying “Had she been my own mother, I would have found her guilty.” He sentenced Dame Alice to death by burning at the stake, which was the punishment in law for a woman guilty of treason. Her lawyer managed to win a reprieve of five days, which he used to appeal to the King. In an act of clemency James commuted the sentence to death by beheading, and so it happened.
News of this verdict quickly spread through all the gaols across the Southwest. Prisoners were shocked and now very, very scared.
Judge Jeffreys opened the trial in Dorchester in Dorset on Saturday, September 5th, three days after Dame Alice’s execution. In his opening address Jeffreys claimed that “if we would acknowledge our crimes by pleading Guilty to our Indictment, the King, who was almost all mercy, would be as ready to forgive us, as we were to rebel against him; yea, as ready to pardon us as we would be to ask it of him.” Unspoken was the fate waiting for those who chose to ignore Jeffreys’ advice. The prisoners didn’t have to wait long to find out.
Thirty-four of them were brought forward for whom there was strong evidence of guilt who had all elected to plead Not Guilty. In a matter of minutes 29 were convicted and condemned to be “drawn and quartered” - which meant they were to be hanged and then beheaded and their bodies cut into four pieces. The other five changed their pleas to Guilty, their death sentences were commuted and they were all sentenced to transportation to the West Indies.
As Pitman later wrote, “The sudden execution of these men so affrightened the rest, that we all, except three or four, pleaded ‘Guilty’ in hopes to save our lives.” At the Dorchester trial Jeffreys sentenced 175 to Transportation but ordered the execution of another 45 others. Twenty-seven were found Not Guilty and 15 discharged for lack of evidence.
Jeffreys ordered that 12 of the prisoners condemned to death be hanged in Lyme Regis. He ordered the 33 other hangings to be spread between nine towns throughout Dorset, with the heads and quarters of the victims treated with salt and pitch to preserve them, and then sent for display elsewhere. He was precise in his instructions: four quarters and one head were to be sent to Upway; two quarters and one head to Broadmaine; and two quarters to Winterborne St Martin. Two quarters were to be displayed at Waymouth Towne Hall and one at Melcombe Towne hall. Body parts were to be sent to a total of 18 parishes and villages.
Judge Jeffreys moved on to Exeter, where the court condemned 12 to hang, 13 to fines and whipping and 15 to Transportation.
It was then Taunton’s turn.
We can imagine William Phippen’s state of mind. Not much more than a child, he was wounded, abused and hungry, locked up in Taunton Castle with hundreds of distraught men, none knowing if they were to live or to die. There was only one other from Hawkchurch in gaol with him, the soap boiler Weston Hillary, who was no doubt reviled for his betrayal of three others back in Lyme Regis.
The other rebels from Hawkchurch were still at large. John Parris was arrested in March, but John Samsome and John Moore would never be captured.
The two Hawkchurch men came to trial along with another 512 prisoners on Friday, September 18th and Saturday, September 19th. Only four of the rebels chose to plead Not Guilty. Three of these were hanged on the following Monday. Jeffreys then condemned every one of the other prisoners to death. He forced them and their anxious families to wait another agonising week before announcing that the sentences for 284 of them would be commuted to Transportation. The other 223 prisoners were to be hanged in 24 different towns and villages throughout the county of Somerset. Jeffreys wrote to the Sheriff of Somerset:
“. . . Whereas the seveall (persons) in the schedules herewith annexed . . . Were (convicted of) high treason and have received judgment of death to be drawne, hanged and quartered.
“These are to will and require you immediately on sight hereof to putt the same judgment in Execution in the several places in the said schedules annexed . . .
“Lett the Sheriff of the County of Somersett dispose of the heads and quarters . . . in the severall places where they are to be executed or in the neighbouring parishes . . . The sheriffe is to begin at Taunton this day and to-morrow at Wellington . . .”
William Phippen was one of the 284 sentenced to be transported. Weston Hillary was not. Jeffreys addressed Weston, ordering:
That you be carried back again to the place from whence you came, and from thence to be drawn upon an hurdle to the place of execution where you shall be hanged up by the neck, but cut down alive, your entrails and privy members cut off your body, and burnt in your sight, your head to be severed from your body, and your body divided into four parts, and disposed at the King’s pleasure. And the Lord have mercy upon your soul.
The sentence was carried out in Ilminster, 11 miles from Weston’s home.
Then Jeffries went on to Wells, where 543 were brought to trial. Only one pleaded Not Guilty. He was tried and convicted in the morning and executed in the afternoon. Of the other 542, 97 were hanged, the executions spread amongst 13 towns and villages.
The last of the prisoners went on trial in London, where two were ordered hanged and a woman burnt at the stake.
The government was determined to set a clear example in every town, village and parish of the price to be paid for rebellion. Earle wrote:
“The executions were carried out in batches in towns and villages throughout the area, ten here, two there, five there. Everyone was to have the chance to see the men hang, to smell their entrails burning, to admire the skill of the butchers who carved them up. And many took the chance, often walking several miles to see the execution of a friend or relation.”
The executions were carried out by Jack Ketch, down from London after his disastrous performance on Tower Hill, assisted by a butcher with the exotic name of Pascha Rose and “a local expert known for the rest of his life by the charming name of ‘Tom Boilman.’”
The cost of the executions was to be borne by the towns themselves. The Melcombe Regis archives record more than £16 for “Burning and Boyling the Rebells executed att this town.” The Bishops Caundle parish accounts book has an entry for 17 shillings and ninepence “Allowed to Trevillion for his Expenses about fetching from Sherborn and hanging up the Quarter of the Traitour at the towns end.”
We have a written record of the instructions given to one town where four rebels were to be hanged:
“These are therefore to . . . Require you . . . To erect a gallows in the most public place of your said cittie to hang the said traitors on, and that you provide halters to hang them with, a sufficient number of faggots to burne the bowels of fower traitors and a furnace or cauldron to boyle their heads and quarters, and salt to boyle therewith, half a bushell to each traitor, and a tarr to tarr them 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 ready with a dray or wayne and the said fower oxen at the time hereafter mencioned for execution, and yourselves together with a guard of fortie able men att the least, to be present on Wednesday morning next by eight of the clock, to be aiding and assisting to me, or my depute, to see the said rebells executed. You are also to provide an axe and cleaver for the quartering of the said rebells.”
Wigfield quotes an eyewitness, a Quaker who was himself interred in a gaol:
“There were eight executed, quartered and their bowels burnt on the market-place before our prison window. I went out of the way because I would not see it, but the fire was not out when I returned; and they forced poor men to hale about men’s quarters, like horse-flesh or carrion, to boil and hang them up as monuments of their cruelty and inhumanity, for the terror of others, which lost King James the heart of many; and it had been well he had shewed mercy when it was in his power.”
Twelve men were condemned to die in Lyme Regis on September 12th. Judge Jeffreys passed through the town the day before. He and his retinue were lavishly entertained by Gregory Alford, the town’s not so brave mayor. Alford treated them to a spread of ham and sturgeon, liberally washed down with fine wine. Earle described the scene the next day:
They were brought from Dorchester gaol, six in a coach and six in a cart, and then left for two hours in an inn at Lyme Regis, ‘until the butchers had prepared every thing for their slaughter.’ All twelve then walked to the beach where Monmouth had landed . . . The gallant Colonel Holmes, who was the first to be executed, had to be helped up the ladder by the sheriff, ‘having but one arm, and the gallows higher than ordinary.’ He died bravely . . . How long the business of execution and the subsequent butchery took we do not know, but it must have been a fairly lengthy process . . . There may well have sometimes been a whole hour between executions and one can imagine only too well the feelings of John Marders . . . Last but one to die . . . Who ‘seemed to the spectators to be somewhat unwilling to die’ or the last man of all, John Kidd . . . ‘Do you see this?’ he said as he pointed to the dismembered carcasses in front of him. ‘Do you think this is not dreadful to me, that eleven of twelve of us, that but a few hours since came down together, are dead and in eternity? And I am just going to follow them, and shall immediately be in the same condition’ . . . and [then] ‘the executioner did his office.’
Despite being an affirmed Royalist, Sir Charles Lyttelton, a member of the local gentry, was appalled by what he was seeing throughout the countryside, writing on October 7th:
“. . . And all quartered, and more every day in other parts of the country, which will be to the number of near 300; and most of their quarters are and will be set up in the towns and highways, so that the country looks, as one passes, already like a shambles.”
Rotting heads and quarters were still on display on poles and spears at bridges, crossroads and other prominent places throughout the West Country the following summer, when King James made a tour of the area. He was sickened by their sight and ordered them taken down and buried.
Gregory Allford’s role in this story didn’t end with that dinner in Lyme Regis on September 11th. After the hangings and transportation of their husbands and sons and the brutal retaliation of the royal army, it was now decided that the people of the West Country would pay restitution to the government. Alford was appointed one of the commissioners tasked to inquire into the value of the rebels’ estates, to take over their property and to lease or sell it, of course with the opportunity to keep some of the proceeds on their way to government coffers.
Some of the rebels were wealthy and ended up paying huge fines, but most had few assets. In many cases even these were taken, the fines levied so high that they left families destitute. The commissioners were ruthless, seizing whatever they could, even bundles of wheat when there was nothing else to take.
Once the commissioners’ work was done, Alford was rewarded for his faithful service by an annual pension of £120.
Those condemned to Transportation were “given” to prominent members and associates of the Royal Court. They were to be indentured for four years and banned from returning to England for ten. They were almost all sent to the Caribbean, with 339 destined for the island of Barbados.
William Phippen was amongst a hundred given over to the custody of Sir William Booth, a London merchant with connections to that island. We don’t know how much he paid Jeffreys and his henchmen for these prisoners, but on top of the purchase price he would have paid in the order of £5 each for the voyage across the Atlantic.
Booth signed a receipt for his prisoners, writing “Received According to his Maties direccons the Warrt from the Ld Chief Justice with a Schedule thereunto annexed of One hundred persons attainted of high Treason wch are by me to be transported in to his Maties Island of Barbadoes according to a Condicon of a Recognizance entered into by me for that purpose . . .” He signed and dated it on 25th of September.
Booth transported 90 of his prisoners from the port of Bristol on the ship the John Frigget. He kept detailed records and it is on one of his lists that William Phippen is recorded as being 16 years of age.
William was one of 90 prisoners marched in shackles up the road from Taunton to the port of Bristol in October. There they were “Put on board the John Frigate cap[tain] Will[iam] STOKES commander . . .”
We have no description of the John Frigate, but it is unlikely to have been comfortable. Various journals mention it sailing from Bristol in 1670 with immigrants for Virginia; an ownership share being left to heirs in a will in 1676, and carrying 550 pieces of English earthenware to Bilbao in Spain in 1686. It seems the John Frigate wasn’t a slaver, but conditions on board were probably not all that much different.
The most complete record of the experience of the Monmouth rebels sailing across the Atlantic comes in the memoirs of John Coad, which were kept by his family for generations and only published in 1849. His account is fuelled by religious fervour and he attributes his eventual deliverance from hanging to the hand of God. The said hand instead transported him to Jamaica:
The master of the ship shut 99 of us under deck in a very small room, where we could not lay ourselves down without lying one upon another. The hatchway being guarded with a continual watch with blunderbusses and hangars, we were not suffered to go above deck for air or easement, but a vessel was set in the midst to receive the excrement, by which means the ship was soon infected with grievous and contagious diseases, as the smallpox, fever, calenture, and the plague, with frightful blotches. Of each of these diseases several died, for we lost of our company 22 men. This was the straitest prison that ever I was in, full of crying and dying. Though we were shut down in the dark as in a dungeon, yet we did pray and sing praises to our God. Eventually the well were separated from the sick and allowed above deck, but they suffered from short rations and shortage of water.
One of the 90 prisoners on the John Frigate died even before it sailed from Bristol. Another 12 died during the voyage. All were “thrown over board out of the said Ship . . .” One more died even as the ship dropped anchor outside Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados. Ironically Captain Stokes died on this voyage too.
The island’s Lieutenant Governor, Edwyn Stede, wrote on January 28th 1686 that:
John Rogers Cheife Mate and William Alexander Second Mate of the Ship John Friggott of Bristoll, whereof William Stoakes deceased was lately Master, personally appeared before me, and made Oath on the holy Evangelist of Almighty God, that the above convicted Rebells by the sd Stoakes taken in att the Port of Bristoll, are the very same Rebells, that were delivered to, and by the said Stoakes brought in the said Shipp to this Island, and that they were all of them here landed and delivered to M; John Browne and Company Factors for S’ William Booth Knt . . .
The very next day the 77 remaining rebels were sold by John Brown at auction. William Phippen was purchased by Samuel Smart.
Who was this Samuel Smart? We have to draw conclusions from the few snippets of information in the remaining records from the time.
The Barbados census of 1680 tells us that he was married, had one child at the time, and owned 13 slaves. From a baptism record of 1684 we know that his wife was named Hephshiba, which was almost as uncommon a name then as it is now. There is no surviving record of Smart’s arrival on the island, nor of his marriage or burial.
Smart was respected in the island’s white community. In 1688 he was Churchwarden for St Michael’s Parish, which included Bridgetown, the island’s capital city. That year he was also appointed to a committee tasked with auditing the parish accounts. He appears in some documents in 1689, when he testified against a papist apparently agitating for rebellion on the island.
An entry in the English government Treasury Books for October 26, 1691 reports that Samuel Smart was at that point dead, and the position he had filled of “Receiver General of the Duty of Four and a Half per cent” for Barbados was accordingly vacant. A government document of 1737 reports that the incumbent for this position was paid a proportion of the duties collected, which in that year amounted to £250. This suggests Smart would have been well connected to the island’s elite and fairly wealthy for his time.
Stephanie E. Smallwood, in her book Saltwater Slavery sheds some more light on Smart’s business affairs. She writes that there was a market for every slave that arrived in the Americas, “down to the weakest and the sickest.” A specialised secondary market developed, in which a few traders would buy the weakest slaves at low prices, nurse them to health and sell them on at a profit. It appears Smart was one such trader. Smallwood writes “Out of the Africans who arrived in Barbados aboard the Speedwell in May 1681, this was the group of fifty-one slaves sold to Samuel Smart for the grossly reduced sum of two hundred pounds.”
We know William Phippen had been injured at Sedgemoor. Perhaps he had not yet recovered from those injuries, making him an unattractive prospect for most of Barbados’ planters. Smart may have purchased William with the intention of selling him on once his wounds had fully healed.
Just a few days after William Phippen’s arrival and his purchase at auction, at King James urging the island’s General Assembly passed “An Act for the governing and retaining within this island, all such rebels convict, as . . . Shall be transported . . . to this place.”
Eager to demonstrate their loyalty to King James through their “abhorrence and detestation” of the “wicked, inhuman and damnable” rebellion, the assemblymen ordered that the rebels could not be redeemed “by money or otherwise” until ten years had passed and during that time the rebels had to perform any and all labour of any kind ordered by their owners or any future owners. Anyone attempting to help a rebel escape would be subject to a £200 fine, compensate the owner for his financial loss and be imprisoned for a year without chance of parole. Any rebel attempting to escape would be subject to 39 lashes, an hour in the pillory and the branding of the letters F.T. (Fugitive Traitor) on his forehead. The act goes on to list punishments for a range of other crimes. To encourage enforcement of the act, one fifth of the value of any fines levied would be paid to informants.
We know of only one escape. Henry Pitman was a surgeon swept up in the rebellion. He was educated, literate and by the standard of the day wealthy. After 15 months on the island he led five fellow rebels and two other convicts off the island on a small boat and after many adventures arrived back in England, where he wrote a popular memoir. His story was the basis for Captain Blood, a blockbuster movie of the 1930s starring Errol Flynn.
None of the other rebels on Barbados left any written accounts, but there are stories recorded by earlier prisoners. Heinrich von Uchteritz, Marcellus Rivers and Oxenbridge Foyle were all transported in the 1650s. Rivers and Foyle described being treated as merchandise and being sold as beasts. They were yoked to ploughs, whipped at their masters’ pleasure and lived in ‘sties worse than hogs.’ von Uchteritz compared his quarters to a dog kennel and complained about his endless diet of potatoes and cassava, which before this had been unknown to him. He had no meat, and drank only water with a little sugar and lemon juice.
In March, three months after William Phippen’s arrival in Barbados, King James issued a general pardon for all those rebels in gaol or still at large. John Samsome came out of hiding and John Parris was released from gaol, both free to return home to Hawkchurch. John Moore, also from Hawkchurch, was one of the few rebels exempted from the pardon. We don’t know why, but most likely because he had served as an officer in Monmouth’s army. His fate is unknown.
It’s hard to understand how devastating the uprising had been on this small area of England. Some 2,000 men had been killed or exiled from a population of less than half a million; properties had been confiscated; widows made paupers. Bad blood between Monmouth supporters and Royalists endured for a generation.
So when another rebellion struck England in 1688, the response from the West Country was very different. More invasion than rebellion, it was led by Mary, King James’ daughter, and her husband William, Duke of Orange, the ruler of Holland. Perhaps they had learned from Monmouth’s mistakes, because they arrived on English soil not with three ships and 88 men, but with 57 ships and 21,000 trained soldiers.
They landed at Torbay, 40 miles west of Lyme Regis, and set up their initial headquarters in Exeter. They then marched to London through Axminster, skirting Hawkchurch, and on through the same towns and villages that had risen to support Monmouth three years before. But King James, Judge Jeffreys and Colonel Kirke had done their job well: cowed and scared, the people of the area stayed in their cottages and hid in their barns. None joined the rebellion.
No matter: this second rebellion was a success anyway. Seven weeks after the landing at Torbay King James fled the country, to die in exile in France in 1701. Jeffreys was arrested and interred in the Tower of London to die there of kidney disease a year later.
William and Mary were crowned as joint monarchs in 1689. Their landing in Torbay on November 5th 1688 and their coronation on April 11, 1689 were bookends for what was later known as The Glorious Revolution, a period of intense negotiation between them and Parliament, which ushered in a more democratic constitutional monarchy, ending almost a century of conflict between King and Parliament and delivering all for which the Monmouth rebels had fought and sacrificed.
In 1690 King William pardoned the transported rebels and permitted them to return home. This edict received little support in Barbados: planters argued that they would lose money and be unable to replace the labour of the rebels if they were to be freed. The colony’s assembly, controlled by the planters, gave the rebels their freedom, but mandated that they would have to complete their ten years on the island before they would be allowed to leave. Returning to England would have been a challenge for most of them anyway, as few would have had any money to pay for the voyage back across the Atlantic. There is a record of only one former rebel raising the money for his return journey, but this unfortunate soul drowned when his ship sank on the homeward voyage.
Wigfield reports that around this time a shipload of ‘Poor House Girls’ arrived on the island, “sent out to be servants to the wealthy or wives to the poorer settlers [by which means] the little company of West Country exiles kept their community white.”
Many of the rebels moved with their new wives into a remote valley below the summit of Pico Tenerife, in the north of Barbados, where they eked out an existence growing tobacco. Wigfield claims the ruins of the cottages they built “still show a recognisable West Country style, unknown in the rest of the island.” Things are changing fast, but the ancestors of those Monmouth rebels are still living on the island today, still isolated in a distinct segregated community.
There are two enigmatic entries in the Barbados records. One, from December 30, 1694, records the baptism of Mary, the daughter of William and Elizabeth Phippen. The other, from July 30, 1697, records the baptism of Winifride, the daughter of “William Phippin deceased and Elizabeth his wife.” These appear to be the final records for William Phippen of Hawkchurch, dyer, who so foolishly sealed his fate at the age of 16 in a doomed rebellion that lasted just 25 days in the summer of 1685.
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