James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth
James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, 1st Duke of Buccleuch, was an English Army officer and courtier. Originally called James Crofts or James Fitzroy, he was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the eldest illegitimate son of Charles II of England with his mistress Lucy Walter.
The Duke of Monmouth served in the Second Anglo-Dutch War and commanded English troops taking part in the Third Anglo-Dutch War before commanding the Anglo-Dutch brigade fighting in the Franco-Dutch War. He led the unsuccessful Monmouth Rebellion in 1685, an attempt to depose his uncle King James II and VII. After one of his officers declared Monmouth the legitimate king in the town of Taunton in Somerset, Monmouth attempted to capitalise on his Protestantism and his position as the son of Charles II, in opposition to James, who had become a Roman Catholic. The rebellion failed, and Monmouth was beheaded for treason on 15 July 1685.
Biography
Parentage
, moved to The Hague in 1648, during the Second English Civil War, where his sister Mary and his brother-in-law William II, Prince of Orange, were based. The French relatives of Charles' mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, had invited Charles to wait out the war in France with the Queen, but he opted for the Netherlands, as he believed there was more support to be gained for the cause of his father, King Charles I, in the Netherlands than in France. During the summer of 1648, the Prince of Wales became captivated by Lucy Walter, who was in The Hague for a short visit. The lovers were only eighteen, and she is often spoken of as his first mistress, though he may have begun having affairs as early as 1646. Their son James was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands on 9 April 1649, and spent his early years in Schiedam.It has been rumoured that in the summer of 1648 Lucy had been the mistress of Colonel Robert Sidney, a younger son of the Earl of Leicester. As Charles had no legitimate surviving children, his younger brother James, Duke of York, was next in line to the throne. When the boy grew up, those loyal to the Duke of York spread rumours about the young James' resemblance to Sidney. These voices may have been encouraged by the Duke of York himself, who wished to prevent any of the fourteen royal bastards his brother acknowledged from gaining support in the succession. In 2012, a DNA test of Monmouth's patrilineal descendant the 10th Duke of Buccleuch showed that he shared the same Y chromosome as a distant Stuart cousin; this is evidence that Charles II was indeed Monmouth's father.
As an illegitimate son, James was ineligible to succeed to the English or Scottish thrones, unless he could prove rumours that his parents had married secretly. He came to maintain that his parents were married and that he possessed evidence of their marriage, but he never produced it. King Charles II testified in writing to his Privy Council that he had never been married to anyone except his queen consort, Catherine of Braganza.
Early life
James had a younger sister or half-sister, Mary Crofts, whose father may have been Lord Taaffe. Mary later married the Irishman William Sarsfield, thus becoming the sister-in-law of the Jacobite general Patrick Sarsfield.In March 1658, young James was kidnapped by one of the King's men, sent to Paris, and placed in the care of William Crofts, 1st Baron Crofts, whose surname he took. He briefly attended a school in Familly.
Officer and commander
On 14 February 1663, almost 14 years old, shortly after having been brought to England, James was created Duke of Monmouth, with the subsidiary titles of Earl of Doncaster and Baron Scott of Tynedale, all three in the Peerage of England, and, on 28 March 1663, he was appointed a Knight of the Garter.On 20 April 1663, just days after his 14th birthday, the Duke of Monmouth was married to the heiress Anne Scott, 4th Countess of Buccleuch. He took his wife's surname upon marriage. The day after his marriage, the couple were made Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, Earl and Countess of Dalkeith, and Lord and Lady Scott of Whitchester and Eskdale in the Peerage of Scotland. The Duke of Monmouth was popular, particularly for his Protestantism. The King's official heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, had openly converted to Roman Catholicism.
In 1665, at the age of 16, Monmouth served in the English fleet under his uncle, the Duke of York, in the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In June 1666, he returned to England to become captain of a troop of cavalry. On 16 September 1668 he was made colonel of the His Majesty's Own Troop of Horse Guards. He acquired Moor Park in Hertfordshire in April 1670. Following the death in 1670, without a male heir, of Josceline Percy, 11th Earl of Northumberland, the earl's estates reverted to the Crown. King Charles II awarded the estates to Monmouth. The Countess of Northumberland successfully sued for the estates to be returned to the late Earl's only daughter and sole heiress, Lady Elizabeth Percy.
At the outbreak of the Third Anglo-Dutch War in 1672, a brigade of 6,000 English and Scottish troops was sent to serve as part of the French army, with Monmouth as its commander. He became Lord Lieutenant of the East Riding of Yorkshire and Governor of Kingston-upon-Hull in April 1673. In the campaign of 1673 and in particular at the Siege of Maastricht that June, Monmouth gained a considerable reputation as one of Britain's finest soldiers. He was reported to be replacing Marshal Schomberg as commander of England's Zealand Expedition, but this did not happen.
In 1674, Monmouth became Chancellor of Cambridge University and Master of the Horse, and King Charles II directed that all military orders should be brought first to Monmouth for examination, thus giving him effective command of the forces; his responsibilities included the movement of troops and the suppression of riots. In March 1677, he also became Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire.
In 1678, Monmouth was the commander of the Anglo-Dutch brigade, now fighting for the United Provinces against the French, and he distinguished himself at the Battle of Saint-Denis in August that year during the Franco-Dutch War, further increasing his reputation. The following year, after his return to Britain, he commanded the small army raised to put down the rebellion of the Scottish Covenanters and despite being heavily outnumbered, he decisively defeated the Covenanter rebels at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge on 22 June 1679.
Exile and rebellion
During the Exclusion Crisis of 1679 to 1681, Monmouth attracted support as successor to the throne. Charles's heir, his brother, the Duke of York, was, as a Catholic, deeply unpopular and a bill was put before parliament excluding him from the succession. Monmouth's supporters hoped that he would be legitimised and become Charles's Protestant successor instead. However, the king was adamant in his opposition to changing the succession and prevented the bill from passing by dissolving parliament in May 1679. As Monmouth's popularity with the masses increased, he was obliged by his father to go into exile in the Dutch United Provinces in September 1679. Following the discovery of the so-called Rye House Plot in 1683, which aimed to assassinate both Charles II and his brother James, Monmouth, who had been encouraged by his supporters to assert his right to the throne, was identified as a conspirator.After King Charles II's death in February 1685, Monmouth led the Monmouth Rebellion, landing with three ships at Lyme Regis in Dorset in early June 1685, in an attempt to take the throne from his uncle, James II and VII. He published a "Declaration for the defence and vindication of the protestant religion and of the laws, rights and privileges of England from the invasion made upon them, and for delivering the Kingdom from the usurpation and tyranny of us by the name of James, Duke of York": King James responded to this by issuing an order for the publishers and distributors of the paper to be arrested. Monmouth declared himself as the rightful king at various places along the route including Axminster, Chard, Ilminster and Taunton. The two armies met at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685, the last clear-cut pitched battle on open ground between two military forces fought on English soil: Monmouth's makeshift force could not compete with the regular army, and was soundly defeated.
Capture
Following the battle a reward of £5,000 was offered for his capture. On 8 July 1685, Monmouth was arrested near Ringwood in Hampshire, by tradition "in a field of peas". The events surrounding his capture are described by George Roberts in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine.When the Duke had left his horse at Woodyates Inn, he exchanged clothes with a shepherd, who was soon discovered by local loyalists and interrogated. Dogs were then put onto the Duke's scent. Monmouth dropped his gold snuff box, full of gold pieces, in a pea field, where it was afterwards found.
From Woodyates Inn the Duke had gone to Shag's Heath, in the middle of which was a cluster of small farms, called the "Island". Amy Farrant gave information that the fugitives were concealed within the Island. The Duke, accompanied by Busse the Brandenburgher, remained concealed all day, with soldiers surrounding the area and threatening to set fire to the woodland. Busse deserted him at 1 am, and was later captured and interrogated, and is believed to have given away the Duke's hiding place. The spot was at the north-eastern extremity of the Island, now known as Monmouth's Close, in the manor of Woodlands, the property of the Earl of Shaftesbury. At about 7 am Henry Parkin, a militia soldier and servant of Samuel Rolle, discovered the brown skirt of Monmouth's coat as he lay hidden in a ditch covered with fern and brambles under an ash tree, and called for help. The Duke was seized. Bystanders shouted out "Shoot him! shoot him!", but Sir William Portman happening to be near the spot, immediately rode up, and laid hands on him as his prisoner. Monmouth was then "in the last extremity of hunger and fatigue, with no sustenance but a few raw peas in his pocket. He could not stand, and his appearance was much changed. Since landing in England, the Duke had not had a good night's rest, or eaten one meal in quiet, being perpetually agitated with the cares that attend unfortunate ambition". He had "received no other sustenance than the brook and the field afforded".
The Duke was taken to Holt Lodge, in the parish of Wimborne, about away, the residence of Anthony Etterick, a magistrate who asked the Duke what he would do if released, to which he answered: "that if his horse and arms were but restored to him at the same time, he needed only to ride through the army; and he defied them to take him again". The magistrate ordered him taken to London.