The Monmouth Rebellion

I have on occasion mentioned William Tapscott, the Rebel, whom I am once more studying as part of an effort to prove or disprove the blood relationship of all Tapscotts (save a few that were adopted or chose the name).

The story of William the Rebel begins with the 1685 death of the English king Charles II and the ascension to the throne of his Catholic brother James II. Within months following James's crowning, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, one of many Illegitimate sons of Charles II, launched an uprising of disgruntled inhabitants of southwestern England, particularly those around Taunton in Somerset. On 11 Jun 1685 the Duke landed at Lyme Regis in Dorset with only 82 supporters and marched north, acquiring on the way a large force of cloth workers (who suffered from a depressed market), farmers, peasants, and Protestant zealots.

At Taunton in Somerset, Monmouth was proclaimed “King,” but his unskilled and poorly armed army was insufficient to defeat the military might of King James, who in 1685 still had the support of the landed aristocracy. On 5 Jul, at the Battle of Sedgemoor in Somerset, the rebels were crushed, giving credence to the assertion that “Somerset County, England has always been the rallying point for forlorn hopes, and the champion of lost causes.” Around three hundred rebels were killed in the actual battle, with many more slayed in the following pursuit. James II lost less than fifty men. (Less than two months later, somewhere nearby, Henry Tapscott, the Immigrant, was born. But our story is not about Henry, but about William.)

Taunton Castle, Somerset, where Judge
Jeffries terrorized Monmouth’s followers.

Following Monmouth’s beheading, King James sought further vengeance. He sent Colonel Kirke with the Queen’s Royal Regiment (“Kirke’s Lambs,” whose badge was a lamb with the flag) into Somerset, where traitors and suspected traitors were hung without trial. Later Judge Jeffreys in the “Bloody Assizes,” which the King dubbed his “campaign in the west,” tried hundreds more, hanging many. Most rebels came from central Somerset, but the Exmoor region did not escape. Insurgents, or suspected insurgents, were hung at Dulverton, Dunster, Minehead, and Porlock. One of those hung in Porlock, in 1685, was Henry Edney, who bore the family name of Henry the Immigrant’s wife to be, Ann.

A poignant church record at the Somerset hamlet of Weston Zoyland shows the condition of five hundred Sedgemoor prisoners briefly housed there: “paid for frankincense and saltpeter and resin and other things to burn in church after ye prisoners had gone out.” Three years later William III’s “Glorious Revolution” to save England “from Popery and slavery” would accomplish what Monmouth’s rebellion had not—the expulsion of James II, William III’s father-in-law.

If you want more details about the Monmouth Rebellion, Thomas Babington Macaulay's five volumes on The History of England from the Accession of James II cannot be beat. And the volumes are available at little or no cost on Kindle. Macaulay's history and that of the Virginia Tapscotts starts in the same year, 1685, when James II was crowned and Henry Tapscott, the Immigrant, was born.

And what has all this to do with William Tapscott, the Rebel? William was one of the Monmouth rebels, one who escaped hanging, but not punishment. His tale is the subject of our next post.