The Man Behind the Iron Mask (12 page)

When the new Parliament met in October 1680, the Exclusion Bill was passed by the Commons but rejected by the Lords. Charles dissolved Parliament and called a new one for March 1681, but again the Commons demanded the Exclusion Bill and again Charles dismissed them. Tension mounted and at the instigation of the Whigs, Monmouth returned in defiance of his father and went on a tour of the country to win popular support. In November 1682, Charles had him arrested for disturbing the peace but could not bring himself to punish him and even allowed him to stay on in England. Monmouth, unrepentant, undeterred, continued to keep company with his Whig friends, and when in June 1683 a conspiracy to raise an open rebellion was disclosed, he was implicated. A group of extremists had planned to assassinate Charles and James at Rye House near Hoddesdon on their way back from the horse-races at Newmarket. Because the races that year had ended earlier than expected and Charles had returned to London ahead of schedule, the plot had failed, but during an interrogation of the suspects it emerged that Monmouth and certain Whig lords were in the process of planning an uprising in London, Bristol and Newcastle. The conspirators were rounded up and the leaders put on trial for their lives. One committed suicide in prison, and two were executed. Monmouth was not even arrested; his father merely sent him off again to Holland.

Having professed himself contrite, Monmouth had little doubt that he would soon be recalled; Charles was too fond a father to keep his favourite son in exile for long. In February 1685, however, the prospect was abruptly and drastically changed. Charles died and was succeeded by James. Not only did this mean that Monmouth could no longer hope to come to England; he would have difficulty finding a home anywhere else. No foreign court could be expected to risk bad feeling with the new King by showing hospitality to his onetime rival. Monmouth's host in Holland, William of Orange,
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asked him to leave, offering the advice that if he went to Hungary to fight against the Turks he would be well-received by the Emperor
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and well thought of by all of Europe. Unsure what to do , he moved to Brussels and there he encountered exiles like himself who had a very different proposition to make. According to them, if he were to land in England and claim the crown, the Whig lords, the city of London and all the surrounding counties would immediately rally behind him. The Earl of Argyll, paramount chief of the clan Campbell, was in Amsterdam, preparing an invasion of Scotland. Monmouth had only to time his landing in England to coincide with that and his success was assured. Persuaded that he would be swept to the throne on a popular uprising which no military, political or religious leader would dare to withstand, Monmouth threw in his lot with the rebels.

Argyll set sail for Western Scotland with 300 men at the beginning of May and Monmouth for Western England with 80 men at the end of the same month. On 11 June he landed at Lyme Regis in Dorset to an enthusiastic welcome and there in the market-place published a manifesto in which James was denounced as a tyrant, a murderer and a usurper, accused among other things of poisoning his own brother, the late King. The declaration also pronounced Monmouth legitimate and the rightful successor to the throne, but announced that he was putting his claim to one side until it could be judged by a free Parliament. Peasants, artisans and traders, day-labourers and apprentices rushed to the standard and in twenty-four hours the rebel army numbered 1,500 men. Three days later, when the assembled horde marched inland, their mere appearance put to flight an army of 4,000 militia drawn up to stop them at Axminster. New recruits flocked in from every side as the march north continued, and Monmouth was everywhere hailed with adulation. On 18 June he reached Taunton in Somerset and was received with such acclaim that on 20 June he forgot his original declaration and proclaimed himself King. His followers were only too delighted, but since he bore the same Christian name as his hated uncle and another King James would have caused confusion, everyone called him ‘King Monmouth'.

From Taunton the army, now numbering 6,000, marched on through Bridgwater, Glastonbury and the Mendip Hills towards Bristol, but on 25 June was driven off by a force of regular troops when trying to cross the River Avon at Keynsham. Monmouth, who had expected to enter Bristol without meeting serious resistance, wavered irresolutely and then drew back. Most of his infantry were barefoot rustics, armed with mattocks and scythes, and what few cavalry he had were mounted on young horses bred for coach or cart and not yet trained to the bridle. Matched against regular soldiers, the rustics were little better than a mob, while the horses were likely to take flight at the first sound of a musket. With such an army he was unwilling to risk a major battle, and yet he had little or no hope of finding reinforcements which would render it more effective. After two whole weeks he had the support of no one except the common people of the towns and villages he had marched through. London had not stirred, nowhere had there been a spontaneous uprising, and not a single member of the aristocracy or gentry, the Commons or the Church, had taken his side. Parliament had put a price on his head and an army of regular troops had been despatched from London to destroy him. On 28 June with the advance guard of those troops already on him, he received news that Argyll had been routed, made captive and executed. Knowing then that his venture had failed, he wanted to give up, but his lieutenants, who still had hopes of success, argued that he could not abandon the thousands of simple people who had put their lives at risk by following him.

On 2 July the rebel army returned to Bridgwater and on 5 July the government forces pitched camp just three miles away at Weston on the plain of Sedgemoor: 2,500 troops, cavalry, infantry and artillery, backed up by 1,500 militia. A battle was unavoidable, and its outcome appeared to be a foregone conclusion. Sedgemoor was reclaimed marshland, flat and bare, criss-crossed by wide, deep trenches, and on such terrain the superiority of the government troops, both in fire-power and manouverability, presaged a massacre. Government officers and men, confident and careless, got drunk on local cider.

Monmouth, seizing the only advantage left to him, decided upon an immediate night attack. In moonlight, obscured by banks of thick fog, he moved his valiant peasants out onto the moor. So far as he knew, there were two trenches to be crossed before the enemy could be reached, and he had guides to lead the way across them. At the second trench, however, a guide missed his way and though the column got across, the noise of their confusion alerted the enemy guard who quickly raised the alarm. Monmouth unflustered drew up his battle-line and moved to the attack only to discover his way barred by a third trench which he had not expected. The two armies, facing each other across this trench, opened fire in the darkness and the horses of the rebel cavalry took fright and stampeded. Their headlong retreat caused panic in the rear, and the supply cars, waiting with what ammunition there was, drove off with the rest. When the government cavalry charged the flanks they were repulsed, but Monmouth knew that with day about to break and ammunition almost spent the situation was hopeless. Treacherously then he took horse and fled, leaving his followers to fight on until the government artillery was brought up and their ranks were broken by heavy shelling. At dawn the routed army poured back into Bridgwater, and the cavalry swept after them, cutting them down in the streets.

Monmouth, riding for his life, fled north to the Bristol Channel with the intention of hiding in Wales, then changed his mind and with two companions rode south-east through Wiltshire, heading for the New Forest and the southern coast. By the time the three men reached Cranborne Chase their horses were dying on their feet and had to be abandoned. Disguised as peasants they continued on foot, but the local militia had been alerted in the meantime and early the following morning one of the two companions was captured. The area was sealed off and the search intensified. At dawn the next day the other companion was taken, and some hours later Monmouth himself was found, wearing the ragged clothes of a shepherd and crouching in a ditch. According to the government account, the soldiers who made the capture did not at first recognize him. His hair had turned white and he cringed in half-witted terror before them, unable to speak or to stand. However, in his pockets, which were crammed with raw pease, were a purse full of gold, his watch, his rings and even his medals, including the Order of the Garter.

Later that day under guard at Ringwood, he was permitted at his own request to write to the King and degraded himself ignominiously in a letter of abject supplication, pleading that he had been misled by others, imploring forgiveness and begging to be allowed to speak to the King in person. On the following day he wrote to the Queen Dowager, entreating her to intercede for him, and on the three-day journey to London shocked all observers by his craven behaviour. On 13 July, with his arms bound behind his back, he was allowed into the royal presence and there he begged for his life at any price. Grovelling and weeping at the King's feet, he swore that he was wrong but not to blame, that he was sorry and understood the errors of his ways, that as proof of his new-found virtue he was even ready to renounce the Anglican faith and become a Roman Catholic. In the Tower later that day he was informed that he would be executed in two days' time and in an access of renewed terror prayed for a respite, beseeching the King's mercy and the help of anyone he thought the King might listen to.

After such ignoble behaviour it is astonishing to find that he went to his death on Tower Hill with the courage and dignity of a true hero. A huge crowd, silent and mournful, saw him salute the guard with a smile and mount the scaffold with a firm tread, heard him speak with tenderness of the woman he loved and with sorrow for the bloodshed he had caused, watched him pray with serenity and prepare himself for the axe with composure. The priests and bishops who were there exhorted him to address the people on the necessity of obedience to the government, but he refused. To the executioner he gave six guineas and the promise of more if he did his job well, then knelt down and stretched his neck across the block. The first stroke was badly delivered, and lifting his wounded head he looked reproachfully at the executioner. The second stroke was no better, nor yet the third. With the head half-severed the body continued to move, and still two more blows were needed to stop it. The head was then separated from the shoulders with a knife. Angry and tearful, the spectators rushed forward and, while the guard struggled to protect the executioner from them, they dipped their handkerchiefs in the dead hero's blood.

One explanation for this extraordinary transformation from shameless cowardice to noble heroism was that the government had told lies about Monmouth's behaviour in captivity in the hope of discrediting him with his followers and sympathisers. Another explanation was that the hero who died on the scaffold was not Monmouth at all, but a devoted friend who looked like him and chose to die in his place. In the West Country the common people, who for decades afterwards kept as relics odd buttons and ribbons he once had worn, found truth in both explanations: King Monmouth was for them a hero without blemish and he was not dead; one day, they confidently believed, he would return to avenge their suffering. Over a thousand of them had died at Sedgemoor and for a week after that the army had crippled and slaughtered hundreds more in an orgy of looting, rape and torture. The prisons of Somerset and Dorset were packed with prisoners and, in the notorious Bloody Assizes which followed, Judge Jeffreys filled the villages with executions and floggings, with bodies rotting in irons and severed heads on poles.Hundreds who had been able to bribe their way out of prison before the trials began escaped on ships to New England, and Jeffreys had nine hundred more transported as slaves to the plantations of the West Indies. In such devastation, the broken dream of those simple people was transmuted to a messianic faith which found expression in local ballads:

Then shall Monmouth in his glories

Unto his English friends appear,

And will stifle all such stories

As are vended everywhere.

The strength of the people's belief in Monmouth's second coming was so great that in Wiltshire just one year after the rebellion and in Sussex more than ten years later, imposters managed to pass themselves off as Monmouth on the common people and, until they were arrested and exposed as cheats, received help and shelter, money and protection.

The theory that the Iron Mask was Monmouth was first proposed by Saint-Foix in 1768. His argument was founded upon the persistence into the early eighteenth century of the rumour that Monmouth was still living, and to that tradition he added two stories of his own. He claimed that a certain Abbé Tournemine had told him that he had overheard Fr. Francis Sanders, who was the confessor of King James in exile,
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tell the Duchess of Portsmouth that Monmouth was not the man who had been executed. He also claimed that soon after the execution a certain noblewoman, having heard the rumour that someone had taken Monmouth's place at the block, bribed the guards to open the coffin and realized from an examination of the body's right arm that in fact the dead man was not Monmouth.

Having established the tradition as fact in his own eyes, Saint-Foix then came up with a third story culled from a sensational and scurrilous pamphlet published anonymously in Holland under the title
Amours de Charles II et de Jacques II, rois d'Angleterre
. In this, a man referred to as ‘Colonel Skelton' and described as ‘a former commander of the Tower', was made to say: ‘The night after the pretended execution of the Duke of Monmouth, the King, accompanied by three men, came himself to take him from the Tower. His head was covered with a kind of hood and he got into a coach with the King and the three men.' Where Monmouth was taken, the anonymous author did not have his Skelton divulge, but Saint-Foix was quite sure that he was put aboard ship for France that very night, and the hood which hid his face was replaced by a mask of iron, if indeed it was not already covering one. Perhaps it is worth noting, as a point of information, that a certain Beril Skelton was indeed Commander of the Tower during the reign of James II, but for one month only, and that in 1688 just before James fled into exile. At the time of Monmouth's imprisonment, this same Skelton was the King's envoy in Holland.