William the Rebel

All Saints' Church, Culmstock, Devon (2002), where a
William Tapscott married Mary Bronsford, 10 Aug 1654.

Following the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 Jul 1685, the jails of Somerset and Dorset were filled with thousands of captives, many of whom had been chased to the ground by Colonel Percy Kirke and his regiment of “Kirke’s Lambs.” One of the captured Monmouth rebels was William Tapscott, a “sergeweaver” from Culmstock in Devon, possibly the William Tapscott who had married Mary Bronsford three decades earlier on 10 Aug 1654 at Culmstock’s All Saints’ Church. Starting 25 Aug 1685, southwest England saw a series of prosecutions, the “Bloody Assizes,” conducted by the ruthless Chief Justice George Jeffries, a succession of trials that reached the town of Taunton in Somerset, on 18 and 19 Sep 1685. There in the Great Hall of Taunton Castle, William the Rebel was hauled before the Court of Oyer and Terminer and charged with waging war against the King. He was sentenced to be transported to the Americas, and was lucky for that judgement. At Taunton Sir Jeffreys condemned five hundred Monmouth rebels to death. Vicious, cruel, and abusive, not only to prisoners, but to witnesses, attorneys, and jurymen, Jeffreys took delight in dealing out punishment and was particularly happy when watching a woman being flogged or a man swinging at the end of a rope. Even Charles II had despised him stating "That man has no learning, no sense, no manners, and more impudence than ten carted street-walkers." Jeffries was appointed Lord Chancellor by King James as an award for his cruel work.

Judge Jeffries presiding over the "Bloody Assizes."
(John Tutchin, James Blackwood & Co., 1873.)

Mary Bronsford, were she the wife of William the Rebel, would not have been spared. By putting pressure on local landowners, not only were the men who joined Monmouth vigorously suppressed, their wives and children were hounded for months, being turned out of their homes, compelled to hand over their meager possessions, and forced to make payments to the King out of any earnings.

Shipped out to Barbados, Jamaica, and the Leeward Islands to be sold to plantation owners, most transported rebels never saw their homes again. They were kept below decks for the whole of their journeys and were only given the scantiest of coarse biscuits and fetid water. One fifth died on the voyage and so emaciated were the remainder that a slave merchant who handled their sales decided he would have to fatten them up first. One of a hundred prisoners sold for the benefit of Sir Christopher Musgrave, a member of Parliament, William Tapscott was conveyed with thirty-four fellow rebels from Weymouth on the ship Jamaica Merchant, arriving in Jamaica by 12 Mar 1686 (Gregorian Calendar).

[As a side note: Some claim that William’s ship, Jamaica Merchant, had belonged to the pirate Henry Morgan. But Morgan’s ship of that name sank a decade earlier, on 25 Feb 1676. William Tapscott traveled on another vessel of the same name.]

Bill of lading for 35 convicted rebels, including William Tapscott, 30 Nov 1685.

William Tapscott, who cost “Twenty two peeces of Eight” for passage, and other transported prisoners were sentenced to ten years’ service. During that time they could be bought and sold like African slaves, and were forbidden to marry. Heavily dependent on forced labor for its sugar plantations, Jamaica welcomed the captives.

When evicted from Jamaica by the British in 1655, the Spanish had freed the then African slaves, who fled to the mountains. For decades the liberated “Maroons” harassed the British colonists, who, nevertheless, continued importing slaves until, by the time William arrived, Blacks outnumbered whites. It is just possible that William and a slave (or "Maroon") woman founded a Jamaican mixed-race line. In 2013 a 67-marker yDNA test showed a striking two-step genetic match between a descendant of John Ford, a man of color born in Jamaica around 1753, and your author, sixth great grandson of Henry Tapscott, the Immigrant. (Another Tapscott, living in England, shows a yDNA genetic distance from the Ford descendant of only 1 for 67 markers.) Was John Ford a descendant of William Tapscott, the Rebel? If so, William and Henry had a common male predecessor; they were possibly even father and son. But only “possibly.” One must be very careful when drawing conclusions from y-DNA results where there is a surname difference, but the matches are decidedly close.

In 1689, following the Glorious Revolution, which drove James II from Britain, Mary, his daughter, and her husband, William of Orange, ascended to the throne. In 1689 the vicious Judge Jeffreys died of kidney disease in the Tower of London. In 1691 Colonel Kirke passed away in Brussels, redeemed by his military support of William's revolution. In 1701 James II perished in exile in France.

And what became of William Tapscott, the Rebel? In Feb 1690 William and other transported prisoners were pardoned by the new King and released, though in some cases with delay. West Indies Governors and plantation owners were not pleased to lose free labor. Most pardoned rebels lacked the money needed or possibly the inclination to leave Jamaica, where jobs were abundant and wages were good. But opportunities were greatly reduced with the destruction of Port Royal by the 1692 earthquake, after which many of the rebels are believed to have left the colony, often heading to the North American mainland. William Tapscott may have been one of those. And that is the subject of our next posting.

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.

Edgehill

Edgehill manor house.

Recently I received an email stating that the sender, Judy, was a great granddaughter of William Fairfax Tapscott and asking if I knew anything about her origins. Indeed I do, Judy. William Fairfax was a great grandson of Samuel Chichester Tapscott, a GG grandson of Chichester Tapscott, and a GGG grandson of Capt. Henry Tapscott. It was into Chichester’s and then Samuel Chichester’s hands that Capt. Henry’s Edgehill Plantation eventually passed. I was going to suggest that Judy take a look at my posting on this site about Edgehill, but found to my amazement that no mention of Edgehill has previously appeared in these pages. Here is a post long overdue.

Until recently, on the east side of Virginia State Highway 354 (River Road) in Lancaster County, where Belle Isle Road enters from the west, at the end of an unpaved driveway heading up a small hill, stood a white, two-story, frame house dating from around 1770. This was the manor for Edgehill, Capt. Henry Tapscott’s home plantation.

An upstairs room.

Edgehill was large plantation, almost 200 acres, and the manor was a fine house. Capt. Henry was, after all, far wealthier than his brothers, Edney and James. But eventually the plantation passed to those not bearing the Tapscott name through a complex series of marriages, inheritances, and sales, until in 1910 part of the land containing the plantation house was sold to someone with no (known) Tapscott relationship. And Judy lost a possible inheritance. The complicated ownership saga appears in my book, Henry the Immigrant, but to tell you the truth the drawn-out tale is a little boring to nonhistorians.

Slave entrance.

The plantation house has quite a history. It was in that house that Chichester’s daughter Alice Martin Tapscott and granddaughter Mary Alice Tapscott were reportedly born. The two Alice’s are the matriarchs of the Pierce’s of Lancaster County. One of their descendants was Chichester Tapscott Peirce (“Chit”), a loved and renown Lancaster County physician. That story is particularly complex since “Chit” was descended from Chichester Tapscott by two different routes, a case of cousins marrying.

Oldest part of the house, eighteenth century.

A variety of questionable secondary sources claim that prior to heading off to battle at the opening of the Civil War, the Lancaster Cavalry (9th Virginia Cavalry, Company D) assembled at Edgehill for receipt of its company banner, presented by the girls of St. Mary’s White Chapel Church. Among the Confederate troops were the two sons of Samuel Chichester Tapscott, William Chichester, company bugler and standard bearer, and Aulbin Delaney, also a standard bearer. When William was killed in action, his surviving brother saved the Lancaster flag from capture, wrapping it around his torso and secreting it under his uniform. He returned to Edgehill with the banner, which was kept by the family until the 1920s when his niece gave it to the Museum of the Confederacy for safe keeping. Some of this, however, may be only legend, for Aulbin Delaney Tapscott was reportedly taken prisoner in May 1863 and could not have been present when his brother was mortally wounded. It was William Chichester Tapscott’s death at the Battle of Upperville that led to the eventual loss of Edgehill by the Tapscotts, since the plantation went to William’s wife, who remarried.

When I visited the Northern Neck in 2005 I got a tour of the Edgehill plantation house from the present owner. And I got some photographs, several of which are shown here. Unfortunately, the manor is no more. Deemed too expensive to renovate, it was demolished.

When writing Henry the Immigrant, I had occasion to read a most interesting and informative book, At a Place Called Buckingham, by Joanne Yeck. Those of you interested in Virginia or Tapscott history might want a copy.

Buckingham County, Virginia, played a big role in Tapscott history (or vice versa). George Tapscott Sr., son of the first James, helped populate that county with Tapscotts and many of his descendants still live there. Joanne Yeck not only wrote a book about Buckingham County, she now posts articles about the county, “Slate River Ramblings” (http://slateriverramblings.com/). Two of her recent posts concern Fallsburg Mills and that brought back some memories.

While researching Henry the Immigrant I found numerous family trees posted on the internet showing that George Tapscott Jr., who died around 1826, did so in Fallsburg, Kentucky. (You all know what I feel about most posted trees, so I won’t bore you with that harangue.) I found this most strange since there was no evidence that George Jr. had ever left Buckingham County (though he undoubtedly did, Albemarle being just across the James River), let alone the state of Virginia. The Kentucky death probably originated from a statement by Clayton Allen Tapscott, George Jr.’s great great nephew. In some genealogical notes (see post of 7 Jul 2015) Clayton wrote “George Tapscott married Cobbs Killed at Fallsburg.” The reason for the word “killed” is unknown (but exceedingly intriguing); however, “Fallsburg” is the name of a creek that flows into the James River from the south a mile upstream from the Warren Ferry site, near which George Sr. and his descendants lived. In 1823 George Jr’s brother James was a trustee in a sale of land “at Fallsburg” in Buckingham County. Whether Clayton had it right, I don’t know, but there is no doubt that he was referring to Fallsburg, Virginia, not Fallsburg, Kentucky. Some of George Sr.'s descendants went to Kentucky, but George Jr. was not one of them. This correction appears in my own internet trees and in my books. Nevertheless, as of today (1 Mar 2016) sixty-three different trees on Ancestry.com still say that George died at Fallsburg, Kentucky, making it exceedingly difficult to trace the latter part of George Jr.'s life, let alone the lives of his descendants. Only thirty-three trees (correctly) give Buckingham County as his place of death. Is anybody out there listening?

The Warren Ferry, established in Albemarle County in 1789 (about the year of George Tapscott Sr.’s death), operated at this James River site until swept away by Hurricane Agnes in 1972. Brothers George Sr. and Henry Tapscott lived on the south side in Buckingham County. Fallsburg Creek is just a mile upstream. Today, many of George’s descendants live nearby (2010).