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THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH.

he was the author of many excellent pieces, and particularly some papers in the eighth volume of the Spectator. He is much esteemed for his talents, learning, and piety. Of the rise, progress, and state of this town, the worthy and intelligent Dr. Toulmin, (now of Birmingham,) in his History of Taunton, has given much curious information.*

TAUNTON was the grand centre of the Duke of Monmouth's Rebellion, in the reign of James the Second, for in this town, he was proclaimed king, and a company of young girls, from ten to twelve years old, with chaplets of flowers on their heads, presented a Bible to him on the occasion.

As the excessive punishment of the insurgents is thought, by the English historians, to have hastened the glorious Revolution of 1668; a few particulars may prove acceptable to the rising generation. A hatred of tyranny, and a sense of the superior freedom we now enjoy, are amongst the best legacies we can bequeath to a succeeding generation.

The Duke of Monmouth was the illegitimate son of Charles the Second, and, of course, the nephew of James the Second. Having, for state reasons, been exiled into Holland, he there formed a plan of invading this country in order to displace James, on account of his attachment to Popery. The purport of the insurrection, was to

* This excellent man died at Birmingham, July 1815, at an advanced age, much respected: those who knew him revere his memory.

THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH.

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aid and support the Protestant Religion, which was at that period, not only endangered, but in a fair way of being destroyed.

The Duke of Monmouth landed at Lyme, June 11, 1685, was proclaimed King at Taunton, the 20th, and totally defeated at Sedgemoor, near BRIDGEWATER, the 5th of July. Thus terminated a rebellion rashly undertaken and feebly conducted. The unfortunate Duke, who fled from the field of battle, till his horse sunk under him-was found in a ditch with raw peas in his pocket, on which he had, for days, subsisted; and, when seized by his enemies, burst into a flood of tears! He was carried to London, and beheaded on Tower-Hill the 15th of the same month; five strokes of the axe, owing to the timidity of the executioner, being necessary to the severing of his head from the body! He died lamented by the English people, who followed him to the scaffold with sentiments of deep commiseration.

The failure of this expedition of the Duke of Monmouth, is ascribed by historians to a variety of causes. Some attribute it to the departure of Fletcher of Salton, an able man, who afterwards accompanied WILLIAM; others declare that the Duke was betrayed by his own general, Lord Grey, a worthless character, who purchased his life on the occasion, but a few years after laid violent hands on himself.

In the month of September, 1685, JEFFERIES was sent down into the West to try, or rather butcher the delinquents; he was accompanied by

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SHOCKING STORY.

Colonel Kirke, a brutal officer, who vied with the judge in deeds of blood. His ruffian soldiers, he, in derision of the cruel acts they perpetrated, christened by the name of his lambs! A story is told of him which outrages the feelings of humanity. He, at this time debauched a young lady, on the condition of saving her brother, who was a rebel, but whom he next morning hung opposite her chamber window! Pomfret, in his poem, entitled, Lust and Cruelty, has told this story in strains which cannot fail of impressing us with its unparalleled infamy. The story, I am aware, has been differently related, and therefore its truth is supposed to be invalidated. "But Dr. Toulmin, in his Appendix to the History of Taunton, has so judiciously stated the particulars, with the objections, that no doubt of its reality can attach itself to the unprejudiced mind. Rapin, indeed, whose great merit is impartiality, remarks, that, “It was not possible for the King to find in the whole kingdom two men more destitute of religion, honour, and humanity; Jefferies and Kirke were two cruel and merciless tigers, that delighted in blood. Jefferies himself gloried in his barbarity, and boasted, on this occasion, that he had hung more men than all the judges in England since William the Conqueror ! Kirke was not behind Jefferies in cruelty and insolence. Immediately after the Duke of Monmouth's defeat, being sent to Taunton, he caused nineteen persons, by his own authority, without any trial or process, and without suffering their wives or children to speak with

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them, to be hanged, with fifes playing, drums beating, and trumpets sounding. In the same town of Taunton also, Kirke having invited his officers to dinner, ordered thirty condemned persons to be hanged, whilst they were at table, namely, ten in a health to the King, ten in a health to the Queen, and ten in a health to Jefferies!" Of the history of this Kirke little is known: after the Revolution he was employed by William, a circumstance to be lamented. He had the com→ mand of the squadron destined to relieve Londonderry, and might (according to Bishop Burnet) have relieved the besieged a few months sooner, thus effectually preventing the calamities of famine, which they nobly endured. What became of this miscreant, where he afterwards lived, and how he died, no history seems to have recorded! Providence, in its wise management of human affairs, takes care that such characters should either be engulfed in oblivion, or held up by the Historian to the detestation of posterity.

At Winchester, the venerable Lady Lisle was tried for harbouring one of the Duke's party, though his name was in no proclamation. The jury brought her in not guilty; Jefferies sent them out in a fury, they found her not guilty three times; but the judge threatening them with an attaint of jury, she was brought in guilty, and executed, being upwards of seventy years of age! The only favour granted was, that the sentence of burning was changed into beheading. A gentleman also of respectability was condemned to be

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JEFFERIES AND KIRKE.

whipt once a year, during his life, through all the towns of Dorsetshire; the poor man petitioned the King to be hanged; and his Majesty, struck with the request, pardoned him. This gentleman afterwards lived to visit Jefferies in the Tower, when, upbraiding him with his cruelty, the judge's only reply was, that he had not exceeded his commission! But instances of barbarity are without number. Indeed the cruelties exercised on the unfortunate men were of that atrocious complec❤ tion, that they produced in the minds of Britons an abhorrence of those agents by whose influence they had been perpetrated.

Let us, now, however, attend to JEFFERIES, whose name will not be forgotten in this part of the island. His conduct on this occasion reminds me of Randolph, an Earl of Murray, who having, at one time, executed fifty delinquents, is said to have had as much pleasure in seeing their ghastly heads encircle the walls of his castle, as if it had been surrounded with a chaplet of roses! Grainger calls Jefferies a murderer in the robes of a Lord Chief Justice, steeping his ermine in blood!

A passage out of two old books, written at the time, shall be here transcribed, for the expressions glow with an eloquent resentment. They both relate to JEFFERIES, and shew that he was held in utter detestation.

"Had the great Turk," says Mr. Turner, a clergyman of the church of England, “sent his janisaries, or the Tartar his armies, among them, they had escaped better. Humanity could not