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“The Bloody Assizes:” Whig Martyrdom and Memory after the Glorious Revolution*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Melinda Zook
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Extract

Revolutionaries of modern times often imagine themselves not only as creators of a new future, but also as constructors of a new past. They seek to reinterpret events, rewrite texts, desacralize old idols and icons, and institute new heroes, heroines and martyrs for the cause newly victorious. They hope to recast popular memory to justify the new order. Historians might easily associate such attempts to reconstruct history and manipulate memory with the violent context of the French Revolution. Recent work in French cultural history has provided scholars with a fuller awareness of the functions of revolutionary propaganda, from iconography to ritual. Investigations into festival, street literature, rhetoric, reading, audience, and memory have given the revolutionary experience in France a cultural history that England's still lacks.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , Fall 1995 , pp. 373 - 396
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1995

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Footnotes

*

Earlier versions of this essay were given at the North American Conference on British Studies in Montreal, October 1993, and at the American Society for Legal History in Washington DC., October 1994. I would like to thank Lois Schwoerer, Daniel Woolf, James Farr, and Marcus Rediker for their comments.

References

1 Agulhon, Maurice, Marianne into Battle, trans. Lloyd, Janet (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar; Hunt, Lynn, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984)Google Scholar; Ozouf, Mona, Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. Sheridan, Alan (Cambridge, Mass., 1988)Google Scholar; Cameron, Vivian, “Political Exposures: Sexuality and Caricature in the French Revolution,” in Eroticism and the Body Politic, ed. Hunt, Lynn (Baltimore, 1991), pp. 90–107Google Scholar; also Fictions of the French Revolution, ed. Fort, Bernadette (Evanston, Ill., 1991)Google Scholar, which contains, Furet, François, “The Tyranny of Revolutionary Memory,” pp. 151–60Google Scholar. For pre-Revolution France: Darnton, Robert, “Reading, Writing, Publishing in Eighteenth-Century France,” Daedalus (Winter 1971): 214–56Google Scholar, and his The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1985)Google Scholar.

2 Groundbreaking works of English cultural history include: Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971)Google Scholar, Underdown, David, Revel, Riot and Rebellion (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar, and Watt, Tessa, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar. On the dynamics between propaganda and political culture: Schwoerer, Lois G., “Propaganda and the Glorious Revolution,” American Historical Review 82 (1977): 843–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Harris, Tim, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar.

3 Conservative interpretations of the Revolution are found in Jones, J. R., The Revolution of 1688 in England (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; Kenyon, J. P., Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party, 1689-1720 (Cambridge, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Western, J. R., Monarchy and Revolution: the English State in the 1680s (London, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a moderate interpretation, see Speck, W. A., Reluctant Revolutionaries: Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688 (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar. The conservative view has come under attack in the last decade. For a neo-Whig vision of the Revolution, see Schwoerer, Lois G., The Declaration of Rights, 1689 (Baltimore, 1981)Google Scholar; De Krey, Gary, Fractured Society: The Politics of London in the First Age of Party, 1688-1715 (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar; Ashcraft, Richard, Revolutionary Politics and Locke's Two Treatises of Government (Princeton, N.J., 1986)Google Scholar.

4 I describe as “radical” those Whigs who were willing to use violence against the Crown or whose propaganda promoted or justified active resistance to the government. These men have been referred to by historians as the “first Whigs,” or as “Shaftesbury Whigs,” or more recently, as “true Whigs.” See Jones, J. R., The First Whigs: The Politics of the Exclusion Crisis (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar; Goldie, Mark, “The Roots of True Whiggism, 1688-94,” History of Political Thought 1 (1980): 195–236Google Scholar.

5 I am completing a monograph on the most radical propagandists and conspirators of the 1680s and 1690s, entitled, “Conspiratorial Politics, Radical Whig Ideology and Revolution Culture in Late Stuart England.” At present, the best monographs on the topic are Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, and Greaves, Richard L., Secrets of the Kingdom: British Radicals from the Popish Plot to the Revolution of 1688-89 (Stanford, 1992)Google Scholar.

6 The Protestant Martyrs, or the Bloody Assizes (January, 1689)Google Scholar; The Second and Last Collection of Dying Speeches (month unknown, 1689; two editions; published in Dutch); The Bloody Assizes, or the Compleat History of the Life of George, Lord Jeffreys (advertised in February, 1689; two editions; published in Dutch); The Dying Speeches, Letters and Prayers of those Eminent Protestants who Suffered in the West (May, 1689; two editions; published in Dutch); The First and Second Collection of Dying Speeches, Letters and Prayers (advertised in June, 1689); The Dying Speeches of Several Excellent Persons who Suffered for their Zeal against Popery and Arbitrary Government (month unknown, 1689).

7 The Protestant Martyrs, or the Bloody Assizes (January, 1689) Sixteen pages. The dying speeches were those of John Hickes, Alice Lisle, Elizabeth Gaunt, Richard Rumbold and the earl of Argyle. The list of rebels executed for Monmouth's Rebellion numbers 251.

8 On John Dunton, see McEwen, Gilbert D., The Oracle of the Coffee House: John Dunton's Athenian Mercury (San Marino, Calif., 1972)Google Scholar; Plomer, Henry R., A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers (The Bibliographical Society, 1968), pp. 108–10Google Scholar; Hill, Peter, Two Augustan Booksellers: John Dunton and Edmund Curll (Lawrence, Kan., 1958)Google Scholar; Parks, Stephen, John Dunton and the English Book Trade: a study of his career with a checklist of his publications (New York, 1976)Google Scholar. There are entries on John Tutchin in the Dictionary of National Biography, hereafter cited as DNB, and the Bibliographical Dictionary of the British Radicals, eds. Greaves, Richard and Zaller, Robert (London, 1982)Google Scholar, hereafter cited as BDBR; also see, Horsely, L. S., “Rogues and Gentlemen: The Public Characters of Queen Anne Journalists,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 18 (1977): 189–228Google Scholar.

9 The intrigues of this circle were described in Fuller's, WilliamThe Whole Life of William Fuller (1703)Google Scholar. Also see Campbell, George, Imposter at the Bar: William Fuller, 1670-1733 (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Lane, Janet, Titus Oates (London, 1949)Google Scholar; and Muddiman's, J. G.Introduction to The Bloody Assizes (Edinburgh, 1929)Google Scholar.

10 On John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, see Mozley, J. F., John Foxe and His Book (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; and Knott, John, Discourses of Martyrology in English Literature (Cambridge 1993)Google Scholar. On Eikon Basilike, see Skerpan, Elizabeth, The Rhetoric of Politics in the English Revolution, 1642-1660 (Columbia, Mo., 1992), ch. 5Google Scholar, “Icons of the King,” pp. 98-125. There were at least three loyal martyrologies, celebrating the lives of prominent royalists during the civil wars, published in the 1660s: Heath, James, New Book of Loyal Martyrs and Confessors (1663)Google Scholar; Winstanley, William, The Loyall Martyrology or, brief Catalogues and Characters of the most Eminent Persons who suffered for their Conscience during the late Times of Rebellion (1665)Google Scholar: Lloyd, David, Memoirs of the Lives, Actions and Sufferings and Death of those noble, reverend and excellent personages that suffering by death (1668, 2nd ed. 1677)Google Scholar.

11 [Tutchin, John] A New Martyrology: or the Bloody Assizes: Now exactly Methodized in one volume. A Compleat History of the Lives, Actions, Trials Sufferings, Dying Speeches, Letters, and Prayers of all those Eminent Martyrs (June 1689)Google Scholar. It is labeled, “Third edition with large Additions.” Printed for John Dunton. No table of contents. British Library edition contains a large, folded engraving of Monmouth rebel, Benjamin Hewling.

12 The Western Martyrology of 1705, the last new edition, honored seventy-two martyrs. Six were victims of popish plotting and intrigue at court; ten were victims of royalist wrath following the discovery of the Rye House Plot; and fifty-five suffered for their participation in either Argyle's or Monmouth's Rebellion.

13 Thomas Pitts, Gent., A New Martyrology: Or the Bloody Assizes (November 1693)Google Scholar. 4th ed. Printed for John Dunton. Includes a table of contents in the back. 533 pages, plus a fifty-two page history of Jeffreys. The editions held at the Bodleian Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library contain crude woodcut frontispieces of twelve of the most illustrious Whig martyrs: the first Protestant sufferer, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey; the 1685 invaders, the duke of Monmouth and the earl of Argyle; the Rye House martyrs, the earl of Essex; William, Lord Russell, Colonel Algernon Sidney and Alderman Henry Cornish; the Monmouth rebels, William Hewling and William Jenkins; the two women executed in 1685 for harboring Monmouth rebels, Dame Alice Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt; and finally, the Rye House plotter and outlaw, Sir Thomas Armstrong.

14 [Dunton, John] The Merciful Assizes: or, a Panegyric on the Late Lord Jeffreys, Hanging so many in the West (Taunton, 1701)Google Scholar. Printed for Elizabeth Harris.

15 [Tutchin, John] The Western Martyrology, or the Bloody Assizes, Containing the Lives, Trials and Dying speeches of all those Eminent Protestants that Suffer'd in the West of England, and Elsewhere from the Year 1678 to this Time (1705)Google Scholar. 5th ed. Printed for John Marshall. Table of contents in the front. 238 pages, plus twenty-eight page history of Jeffreys. The Bodleian and Folger editions contain the same woodcut frontispiece as the 1693 edition (described above, note 13) with the exception that Sir Thomas Armstrong's picture was replaced by that of Benjamin Hewling.

16 There was an abundance of published sources from which Tutchin and company could draw. Information on the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey; the trial, execution and dying words of the “Protestant Joiner,” Stephen College; the controversial demise of Arthur Capel, earl of Essex in the Tower, and all of the trials, execution accounts, and dying speeches of the Rye House conspirators were published. Seven different accouits of the trials and executions of plotters Lord Russell, Captain Thomas Walcot, William Hone, and John Rouse appeared in the summer of 1683. such accounts formed the source base of the martyrologies. There were far fewer sources for the period between 1685 and 1688.

17 The Western Martyrology, pp. 84-85. The Reverend Samuel Johnson, known as “Julian Johnson” for his pro-Exclusion tract, Julian the Apostate (1683) was imprisoned for seditious libel in 1684. In 1685, he had A Humble and Hearty Address smuggled out of his jail cell and printed. The tract was meant to arouse the consciences of the Protestant soldiers serving under Catholic officers in James II's army encamped at Hounslow Heath. In June of 1686, Johnson was convicted of high misdemeanor, defrocked and whipped from Newbury to Tybum. Both the tract and the spectacle of the former cleric being whipped through London streets impressed contemporaries. See Zook, Melinda, “Early Whig Ideology, Ancient Constitutionalism and the Reverend Samuel Johnson,” Journal of British Studies 32 (1993): 139–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 The New Martyrology (1693), pp. 417–30Google Scholar; The Western Martyrology (1705), pp. 155–62Google Scholar.

19 The Western Martyrology, pp. 49-51, 64-66. Their speeches were already familiar to the reading public. The Speech of the Late Lord Russel, [sic] To the Sheriffs: Together with the Paper delivered by him to them at the place of Execution (1683); A Very Copy of a Paper Delivered to the Sheriffs, Upon the Scaffold on Tower-Hill on Friday, December 7 1683, by Algernon Sidney (1683).

20 The petition appeared in the 1693 and 1705 martyrologies. There is no evidence that it existed any earlier than 1693. Macaulay, whose portrait of the western circuit of 1685 was filled with heart-wrenching, martyrology-originated stories, used the petition as one of his sources. The New Martyrology (1693), pp. 63–64Google Scholar; The Western Martyrology (1705), pp. 272–73Google Scholar; Macaulay, Thomas Babington, The History of England from the Accession of James II, ed. Firth, C. H., 6 vols. (New York, 1968), 2: 638Google Scholar.

21 Tutchin's, petition appeared in The Western Martyrology, pp. 225–26Google Scholar. Tutchin was sentenced by Jeffreys to be whipped and imprisoned for seven years for spreading false reports during Monmouth's Rebellion; however, he contracted small pox while awaiting his punishment and the sentence was never carried out. He was released from prison in March 1686.

22 See the opinions of Monmouth scholars: Earle, Peter, Monmouth's Rebels: The Road to Sedgemoor 16851 (New York, 1977), pp. 168–69Google Scholar; Clifton, Robin, The Last Popular Rebellion: The Western Rising of 1685 (London, 1984), pp. 235, 268–69Google Scholar.

23 This kind of good and evil stereotyping followed the tradition in English Protestantism originated by Foxe. Writes Daniel Woolf, “One of the reasons for the huge success of Foxes's Acts and Monuments was the very shallowness of his stereotyped saints and persecutors…” See his “Memory and Historical Culture in Early Modern England,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 1 (1991): 294Google Scholar.

24 Kirke's Tangier regiments were called “lambs” because of the device of a paschal lamb on their colors. See DNB, s.v. “Kirke, Percy;” James Savage, The History of Taunton in the County of Somerset, originally written by Toulmin, Joshua, “greatly enlarged” by Savage (Taunton, 1822), pp. 540–41Google Scholar. For a reliable account of Kirke's activities after Sedgemoor see Earl, , Monmouth's Rebels, pp. 137–40Google Scholar.

25 The Western Martyrology, pp. 216-17. The atrocity stories were recorded by the Taunton antiquary, Savage, James. Savage did not question Tutchin's portrayal of Kirke. See his The History of Taunton, pp. 540–49Google Scholar.

26 The Western Martyrology, pp. 257-60. The story of Jeffreys laughing at the sermon was repeated time and again; see, for example, Macaulay, , History of England, 1: 643Google Scholar.

27 The Western Martyrology, p. 256. The Speke family of Whitelackington in Illminster were notorious for their radical politics. Presbyterians, intermarried with Quakers, they kept a conventicle at their estate. The father, George, and the eldest son, John, were Whig M.P.s and supporters of Monmouth. John participated in Monmouth's Rebellion but escaped to Holland prior to the Battle of Sedgemoor. The youngest son, Charles, supposedly shook hands with Monmouth as his army passed through Illminster in 1685. The story of Charles's hanging became part of Somerset lore. See Palmer, Kingsley, The Folklore of Somerset (Totowa, N.J., 1976), p. 135Google Scholar. On the Speke family, see Zook, Melinda, “Propagators of Revolution: Conspiratorial Politics and Radical Whig Culture in Late Stuart England,” (Georgetown University, Ph.D Thesis, 1993), ch. 1, passimGoogle Scholar.

28 Ralph, James, The History of England, 2 vols. (1744-1746), 1: 892Google Scholar. The image of Judge Jeffreys as a malicious monster was also fueled in the post-Revolution era by books like, The Unfortunate Favorite: or, Memoirs on the Life and Actions of the Late Lord Chancellor of England (1689,) as well as Whig ballads, verse and prints. It was exaggerated further by writers like Bishop Gilbert Bumet in the eighteenth century and exists today in popular histories like Milne-Tyte, Robert, Bloody Jeffreys: The Hanging Judge (London, 1989)Google Scholar. Attempts to rescue Jeffreys include Woolrych's, Humphry W.Memoirs of the Life of Judge Jeffreys (London, 1827)Google Scholar. Woolrych, however, repeated many of the most sensationalist martyrology-originated stories about Jeffreys. Upon the opening of the assizes, “Lord Jeffreys laughed both during prayers and sermon, a pretty plain sign that he was (according to the singular conceit of an old writer) about to ‘breathe death like a destroying angel, and to sanguine his very ermines in blood.’” The old writer was Tutchin. Woolrych, , Memoirs, p. 200Google Scholar; The Western Martyrology, p. 250. A better vindication of Jeffreys is Keeton's, G. W.Lord Chancellor Jeffreys and the Stuart Cause (London, 1965)Google Scholar. Although Keeton's own strong anti-Whig bias dampens the power of his arguments. He calls Tutchin a “worthless scoundrel” who “obviously deserved” to be whipped (Lord Chancellor, p. 323).

29 That a martyr's speech was previously published does not mean it was either actually said by the condemned on the scaffold or was a paper handed to the sheriffs. Tory propagandists published fictive dying speeches for both Stephen College and William, Lord Russell wherein they confessed their guilt. J. G. Muddiman believed that Tutchin was producing Monmouth rebel dying speeches as early as 1686. But I have found no evidence to substantiate his claim. Muddiman, , The Bloody Assizes, pp. 7–8Google Scholar.

30 A Caveat Against the Whiggs (1712), pt. 2, p. 22Google Scholar; quoted in Muddiman, , The Bloody Assizes, p. 5Google Scholar.

31 Horsley, L. S., “Rogues and Honest Gentlemen: The Public Characters of Queen Anne Journalists,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 18 (1977): 198–228Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., p. 205.

33 A pack of playing cards representing various episodes of Argyle's and Monmouth's rebellions printed in 1685 depicts Tutchin being whipped. The cards were described in the nineteenth century by A. L. Humphreys, who says the nine of clubs shows Thomas Pitts being thrashed “through every town in Doretshire.” “Pitts” was Tutchin's alias. These cards must have added to the popular view that Tutchin was whipped in 1685. See Humphreys, A.L., “Some Sources of history for the Monmouth Rebellion and the Bloody Assizes,” Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society 38 (1892): 325–26Google Scholar.

34 Pope, Alexander, The Dunciad (1728), book II, lines 147–48Google Scholar.

35 Earle, , Monmouth's Rebels, p. 168Google Scholar. Earle also writes, “we do not know how the assizes were conducted. We know only the formal facts of the pleas offered by the defendants, the verdicts given and the sentences imposed” (p. 169).

36 The trial of Alice Lisle is published in A Complete Collection of State Trials and proceedings for High Treason and other crimes and misdemeanors, ed. Howell, T. B., 22 vols. (London, 1816), 11: 298–382Google Scholar. Muddiman, J. G. questioned its authenticity, see his “State Trials and Robert Blaney,” Notes and Queries 155 (1928): 111-12, 149–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Memoirs include, Pitman, Henry, A Relation of the Great Sufferings and Strange Adventures of Henry Pitman, Chyrurgion to the late Duke of Monmouth (1689)Google Scholar which describes the assize at Dorchester. Pitman and his brother were transported and most of his book is about their adventures in the New World. Whiting, John, Persecution Exposed in Some Memoirs relating to the Great Suffering of John Whiting and many others called Quakers (1715)Google Scholar; though not a Monmouth supporter, Whiting was in the Ilchester jail after Sedgemoor and recorded the horrid conditions and treatment of the rebels there. Coad, John, A Memorandum of the Wonderful Providences of God to a poor unworthy Creature (London, 1849)Google Scholar; Coad was transported to Jamaica. Wheeler, Adam, Iter Bellicosum, Camden Society, 12 (1910), pp. 11–166Google Scholar. Wheeler was a drummer in the Wiltshire Militia; he described the battle at Sedgemoor and the immediate aftermath.

38 As both Peter Earle and W. A. Speck have pointed out, there was little averse comment on the conduct of the assizes prior to 1688. Only with the Revolution did Jeffreys and James II blame each other for the carnage. Earle, , The Monmouth Rebels, p. 168Google Scholar; Speck, , Reluctant Revolutionaries, pp. 54–55Google Scholar.

39 Clifton, , The Last Popular Rebellion, p. 240Google Scholar; Earle, , Monmouth's Rebels, pp. 175–77Google Scholar.

40 Official accounts include. An Account of the Proceedings Against the Rebels at Dorchester…at an Assize (4, 5 September 1685); An Account of the Proceedings Against the Rebels at an Assize at Exeter (14 September 1685); A Further Account of the Proceedings Against the Rebels in the West of England (17 September 1685); A List of the Rebels that were executed at Lyme, Bridport, Weymouth, Melcombe-Regis, Sherbourn, Pool, Wareham, Exeter, Taunton and several other places (April 1686). Also published without license was The Last Words of Colonel Richard Rumbold, Madame Alice Lisle, Alderman Henry Cornish and Mr. Richard Nelthorp, who were executed in England and Scotland for High Treason in the Year 1685.

41 In the trimming poem, “The Advice,” written on the eve of the Revolution, James II was advised to “surrender your dispensing power / And send the Western Hangman to the Tower.” Poems on the Affairs of State, Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660-1714, vol. 4, 1685-1688, ed. Crump, Galbraith M. (New Haven, 1968), p. 292Google Scholar.

42 This print, The Lord Chancellor taken disguised in Wapping, was published in English and in Dutch in 1689. The British Museum has several versions. Jeffreys had tried to escape London in December 1688, dressed as a common seamen. The print depicts angry Londoners reminding Jeffreys of all his crimes: “Remember Mr. Cornish,” says one; “Remember the Bishops,” says another, “Remember Maudlin College,” says a third.

43 The Life and Errors of John Dunton (New York, 1974), p. 277Google Scholar.

44 Coke cited The New Martyrology and William Kiffin copied passages out of it. Coke, , A Detection of the Court and State of England, 2: 416Google Scholar; Kiffin, , Remarkable Passages in the Life of William Kiffin, written by himself, ed. Orme, William (London, 1832)Google Scholar.

45 On January 9th, 1692, Dunton printed a long advertisement in his weekly, the Athenian Mercury (no. 12). He reported that The New Martyrology of 1689 had sold out and that a new edition was being designed. Thus he asked all gentlemen in the western counties to send him any further information about those condemned in 1685. Dunton received several replies by persons familiar with his martyrology; they offered further “eye and ear witness” accounts of Jeffreys' cruelties. Their letters were printed in The Western Martyrology, pp. 214-23.

46 The original owner of the British Library edition of The Western Martyrology inscribed next to his name: “a distant relative of the Hewlings,” two young brothers executed by Jeffreys.

47 Knott, John, Discourses, p. 2Google Scholar.

48 Ibid., p. 6; The Western Martyrology, Introduction, pages unnumbered.

49 The Western Martyrology, p. 38.

50 The Western Martyrology, p. 9. Tutchin was quoting a book published after Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey's death by Tuke, Richard, Memoires of the Life and Death of Sir Edmondbury [sic] Godfrey (1682)Google Scholar. Godfrey was a Middlesex magistrate at the time of the Popish Plot. He was the first official to hear Titus Oates's stories in September, 1678. Shortly thereafter his body was found in a ditch near Primrose Hill. His mysterious death was never resolved. Some contemporaries believed he had committed suicide; Whigs blamed his death on Catholics.

51 The Western Martyrology, p. 21.

52 The Western Martyrology, pp. 204, 221.

53 Byman, Seymour, “Ritualistic Acts and Compulsive Behavior: The Pattern of Tudor Martyrdom,” American Historical Review 83 (1978): 627–33CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Knott, , Discourses, pp. 8–9Google Scholar.

54 The Western Martyrology, p. 179.

55 Ibid., p. 180.

56 Ibid., p. 185.

57 Knott, , Discourses, pp. 8, 42Google Scholar.

58 The Western Martyrology, p. 109.

59 One finds a very moving account of the Hewling brothers' final hours in William Kiffin's Remarkable Passages. Kiffin was the Hewlings' grandfather, and he rushed to their side in fall of 1685. Unfortunately, his account of their amazingly “cheerful carriage” was taken straight out of the martyrologies. See Remarkable Passages in the Life of William Kiffin. Kiffin's nineteenth-century biographer, Joseph Ivimey thought the martyrologists had copied Kiffin's description, but Kiffin did not write his memoirs until 1693. Ivimey, Joseph, The Life of Mr. William Kiffin (London, 1833), p. 64Google Scholar.

60 Post-Revolution era saw a proliferation of literature which maintained the innocence of the Whig Lords and furthered their martyrdoms. For example, Booth, Henry, Delamere, Baron, The Late Lord Russell's Case (1689)Google Scholar; Atkyns, Robert, A Defence of the Late Lord Russell's Innocency (1689)Google Scholar; SirHawles, John, Remarks upon the Tryals of…Lord Russel, Collonel Sidney, etc.; anonymous, Sidney Redivivus (1689)Google Scholar. On the martyrdoms of Russell and Sidney, respectively, see Schwoerer, Lois G., “William, Lord Russell: The Making of a Martyr, 1683-1983,” Journal of British Studies 24 (1985): 41–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Worden, Blair, “The Commonwealth Kidney of Algernon Sidney,” Journal of British Studies 24 (1985): 1–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 The Western Martyrology, pp. 31-35, 61, 67.

62 Schwoerer, , “William, Lord Russell,” pp. 43–62Google Scholar. Also see her, Lady Rachel Russell (Baltimore, 1988)Google Scholar.

63 The Western Martyrology, p. 47. See Dugdale's, William description of Charles I's execution in his A Short View of the Late Troubles in England (Oxford, 1681), pp. 371–75Google Scholar. Also see Maguire, Nancy Klein, “The Theatrical Mask/Masque of Politics: The Case of Charles I,” Journal of British Studies 28 (1989): 15–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 The Western Martyrology, introduction.

65 Dunton, , The Merciful Assizes, pp. 24–25Google Scholar.

66 Sharpe, A., Judicial Punishment in England (London, 1990), pp. 30–34Google Scholar; Linebaugh, Peter, “The Tybum Riot Against the Surgeons,” in Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, eds., Hay, D., et. al, (New York, 1975), pp. 65–117Google Scholar; Foucault, Michel, Disciple and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979), ch. 2Google Scholar, “The Spectacle of the Scaffold,” pp. 32-69; Spierenburg, Pieter, The Spectacle of Suffering (Cambridge, 1984), ch. 4Google Scholar, “The Watchers: Spectators at the Scaffold,” pp. 81-109.

67 Sharpe, J. A., “‘Last Dying Speeches;’ Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth-Century England,” Past & Present 107 (1985): 144–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 James's Catholicism, Whig propagandists maintained, disqualified him from the throne. As the Reverend Samuel Johnson bluntly put it, “A popish Guardian of Protestant Laws is such an incongruity” as a “Wolf is to be a Shepherd or as Antichrist is to be Christ's Vicar” (Of Magistry [1688], p. 153).

69 Elizabeth Gaunt had hid Monmouth rebel James Burton. Burton had also participated in the Rye House Plot and had sought assistance from Gaunt after the plot's discovery in 1683. She gave him money and helped him seek transport to Amsterdam. After Burton was found at Gaunt's home in 1685, he won a pardon by informing against her. It was not without reason that London authorities were more interested in prosecuting Gaunt than Burton. She was well known about Wapping and with her husband was involved in smuggling political and religious dissidents to and from Holland. DNB, s.v. “Elizabeth Gaunt;” Parry, Edmund, The Bloody Assize, pp. 267–69Google Scholar. Also see British Library, Add. MS 41817, ff. 219, 225 on her activities in Holland in the summer of 1685.

70 Mrs Gaunt's Last Speech who was burnt at London, October 23, 1685; The Tryals of Henry Cornish and Elizabeth Gaunt…[the latter] for harboring and maintaining Rebels (1685); The Western Martyrology, pp. 136-40.

71 The Western Martyrology, pp. 136-37.

72 DNB and BDBR, s.v. “Rumbold, Richard.” His dying speech was originally printed in 1685: see Richard Rumbold, The Last Words. Rumbold's speech was particularly famous: see Adair, Douglas, “Rumbold's Dying Speech, 1685, and Jefferson's Last Words on Democracy, 1826,” William and Mary Quarterly 9 (1952): 520–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 The Western Martyrology, pp. 143-44.

74 Ibid, pp. 171-72.

75 Ibid., p. 110.

76 Echard, Laurence, The History of England, 3 vols. (1707-1718), 3: 774–76Google Scholar; Kennett, White, A Corn-pleat History of England, 3 vols. (1706), 3: 473–39Google Scholar; Burnet, Gilbert, History of His Own Time (first published in 1724)Google Scholar; modem edition used in this essay was edited by Martin Joseph Routh (Hildesheim, 1969), 3: 58-65; Ralph, James, The History of England, 2 vols. (1744-1746), 1: 980–93Google Scholar; Oldmixon, John, The History of England (1735), pp. 11–13Google Scholar. Also see Hume, David, The History of England, 8 vols. (1789), 8: 227–35Google Scholar.

77 Bumet, 3:60. John, Lord Viscount Lonsdale outdid Burnet, putting the number at 700. See his, Memoirs of the Reign of James II (York, 1808), pp. 12–13Google Scholar. Robin Clifton writes: “Overall, the figure of 251 given by Tutchin in his Western Martyrology seems a reasonably accurate grand total for the bloody assize victims” (The Last Popular Rebellion, p. 239).

78 Coke, Roger, A Detection of the Court and State of England during the Four last Reigns and the Interregnum, 2 vols. (1694), 2: 416Google Scholar. Coke used the 1693 edition of The New Martyrology from which he drew many stories. For the trial of Alice Lisle, see Howell's State Trials, 11: 298–380Google Scholar. The account in Howell does suggest that Jeffreys often acted more like prosecutor than judge, but there is no evidence that the jury contemplated any other verdict than guilty. Jeffreys does exclaim, following the declaration of the verdict, “I think in my conscience the evidence was as full and plain as could be, and if I had been among you and if she had been my own mother I should have found her guilty” (11: 373). This quote was often repeated by Jeffreys' detractors. The story of the verdict being brought back three times by the jury can be found in: Kennett, 3: 438; Burnet, 3: 63-64; Oldmixon, p. 12; Ralph, 1: 888-89; Echard, 3: 774; de Thoyras, Paul Rapin, A New History of England, in English and French by Question and Answer (1729), p. 351Google Scholar. In the nineteenth century, it is found in Rundall, M. A., Symbolic Illustrations of the History of England (London, 1822), p. 400Google Scholar; John, Lord Campbell, Atrocious Judges: Lives of Judges infamous as Tools of Tyranny (New York, 1856), pp. 312–13Google Scholar.

79 Hume, 8: 326. For example, Ralph wrote: “Their [the rebels] behavior under sentence came up to all that is believed of saints and martyrs” (1:889).

80 Burnet, 3: 59-60. In The Merciful Assizes, Dunton accused Jeffreys of drinking, swearing, whore-mongering, levity, pride and covetousness throughout the trials of the western assize (pp. 260-300). Nineteenth-century historians, often citing Burnet as their source, also portrayed Jeffreys as “perpetually either drunk or in a rage” (Roberts, George, The Life, Progresses and Rebellion of James, Duke of Monmouth, 2 vols. [London, 1844], 2: 190Google Scholar.

81 Woolrych, Humphry W., Memoirs of the Life of Judge Jeffreys, sometime Chancellor of England (London, 1827), pp. 185–263Google Scholar; Macaulay, , History of England, 2: 629-61, 633–50Google Scholar; Roberts, George, Monmouth, 2: 188–237Google Scholar; Savage, James, The History of Taunton, pp. 501–32Google Scholar.

82 Roberts, , Monmouth, 2: 200Google Scholar. Woolrych wrote that as source material, “the lugubrious dirges of contemporary writers [the martyrologists] will be rarely introduced” (p. 186). Yet, most of his material originated with the martyrologies though he cited eighteenth-century writers like Oldmixon and Burnet.

83 Roberts, , Monmouth, 2: 221Google Scholar.

84 Savage believed that after the Glorious Revolution, “the partisans of Monmouth and enemies of popery became exceedingly anxious to exaggerate the already cruel and merciless proceedings” in the west. His History of Taunton, however, contained all of the most colorful martyrology-stories. See his letter of August 20, 1823, in the British Library, Add. MS 34516, f. 25v.

85 I am grateful to Mr. Malcom Hay, curator at the Palace of Westminster, for giving me a tour of the corridors of the Houses of Parliament in July 1994.

86 The Western Martyrology, pp. 127-28.

87 The dissenting minister, John Hickes, and the Rye House plotter, Richard Nelthorp, took refuge at Lisle's house after the battle at Sedgemoor. At her trial, Lisle claimed that she had never met Nelthorp, and it is possible that he was concealed at her house without her knowledge. She did know John Hickes though she asserted that she was unaware of his engagement in the late rebellion. Lisle was known to be sympathetic toward dissent and her house, Moyles Court, was probably a “safe-house” for nonconformist teachers. She was known to house a conventicle of around 200 Presbyterians. Her sentence was reversed in 1689. See Stare, Trials, 11: 298–380Google Scholar; DNB, s.v. “Alice Lisle;” Turner, G. Lyon, Original Records of Early Nonconformity Under Persecution and Indulgence, 3 vols. (London, 1911), 1: 142Google Scholar.

88 Macaulay, 2: 630. Not everyone shared Macaulay's Whig tastes. A letter in The Times (15 September 1847) protested the choice of Alice Lisle, “As it is the picture will represent, apparently for approval, what is still a criminal act.”

89 Parry, Edmund, The Bloody Assize (New York, 1929), p. 243Google Scholar. The same passage is also quoted in Dunton, , The Merciful Assizes, p. 83Google Scholar; Roberts, , Monmouth, 2: 223Google Scholar; Pulman, George, The Book of the Axe (London, 1855), p. 128Google Scholar. For the original, see The Western Martyrology, p. 104. Similar descriptions, inspired by this passage, are found in Ralph, 1: 891; Kennett, 3: 438; Hume, 8: 251; Macaulay, 2: 634-36.

90 The New Martyrology, p, 179; DNB, s.v. “Abraham Holmes.” The same story is also retold in Roberts, , Monmouth, 2: 205Google Scholar.

91 DNB & BDBR., s.v. “Abraham Holmes.” Holmes's dying speech appeared for the first time in the 1689 collection. The Bloody Assizes, or the Compleat History of…Jeffreys. On the title-pages, the authors asserted that Holmes's speech was “never before published.” In fact, it was probably never before written.

92 BDBR., s.v. “John Hickes.” There is no evidence that Hickes gave or wrote a dying speech in 1685. Tutchin married Hickes' daughter in 1686 and it is therefore conceivable that Tutchin possessed his last letters. On the other hand, last letters were as much a formulaic genre as dying speeches. Tutchin probably created Hickes' last letters (along with those of Richard Nelthorp, whose letters also appeared for the first time in the martyrologies) in memorial to his friend and fellow-sufferer.

93 The entry on Nelthorp cites his “last letters” in The Western Martyrology as sources. The entry on Tutchin quotes the martyrologies within the text and retells the fictitious story of Tutchin's meeting with Judge Jeffreys in the Tower in 1688.

94 The same Introduction was used in all three editions. The pages are unnumbered.

95 Tutchin and company were probably the first to publish the term “bloody assizes” and undoubtedly popularized it. I have only found the term used once prior to 1689. In Ecclesiastica, or the Book of Remembrance, compiled in 1687 but not published until 1874, the author described Jeffreys as a “man of violence and blood…being the principle person in the management of those bloody assizes.” Ecclesiastica (Barnstaple, 1874), p. 84Google Scholar. On the book's dating, see Wigfield, W. MacDonald, “Ecclesiastica, or the Book of Remembrance of the Independent Congregations of Axminster and Chard, and their Part in the Monmouth Rebellion,” Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 119 (1975):, 51–55Google Scholar.

96 Blackmore, R. D., Lorna Doone (London, 1961), pp. 421–27Google Scholar; Doyle, Arthur Conan, Micah Clarke: His Statement (London, 1912), pp. 370–92Google Scholar.

97 Dunning, R. W., A History of Somerset (Somerset County Library, 1987), p. 65Google Scholar.