[1] Macaulay’s “England.”

After Monmouth’s death there were no further attempts at insurrection, and the struggle at Sedgemoor remains the last encounter worthy of the name of battle fought on English soil.

487.  The “Bloody Assizes” (1685).

The defeat of the insurgents who had rallied under Monmouth’s flag was followed by a series of trials known, from their results, as the “Bloody Assizes” (1685).  They were conducted by Judge Jeffreys, assisted by a band of soldiers under Colonel Kirke, ironically called, from their ferocity, “Kirke’s Lambs.”  Jeffreys was by nature cruel, and enjoyed the spectacle of mental as well as bodily anguish.  As he himself said, he delighted to give those who had the misfortune to appear before him “a lick with the rough side of his tongue,” preparatory to roaring out the sentence of torture or death, in which he delighted still more.

All who were in the remotest way implicated in the late rebellion were now hunted down and brought to a trial which was but a mockery of justice.  No one was permitted to defend himself.  In fact, defense would have been useless against the blind fury of such a judge.  The threshold of the court was to most that crossed it the threshold of the grave.  A gentleman present at one of these scenes of slaughter, touched with pity at the condition of a trembling old man called up for sentence, ventured to put in a word in his behalf.  “My Lord,” said he to Jeffreys, “this poor creature is dependent on the parish.”  “Don’t trouble yourself,” cried the judge; “I will soon ease the parish of the burden,” and ordered the officers to execute him at once.

Those who escaped death were often still more to be pitied.  A young man was sentenced to be imprisoned for seven years, and to be whipped once a year through every market town in the county.  In his despair, he petitioned the King to grant him the favor of being hanged.  The petition was refused, but a partial remission of the punishment was at length gained by bribing the court; for Jeffreys, though his heart was shut against mercy, always had his pockets open for gain.  Alice Lisle, an aged woman, who, out of pity, had concealed two men flying from the King’s vengeance, was condemned to be burned alive; and it was with the gratest difficulty that the clergy of Winchester Cathedral succeeded in getting the sentence commuted to beheading.

As the work went on, the spirits of Jeffreys rose higher and higher.  He laughed, shouted, joked, and swore like a drunken man.  When the court had finished its sittings, more than a thousand persons had been brutally scourged, sold as slaves, hanged, or beheaded.  The guideposts of the highways were converted into gibbets, from which the blackened corpses swung in chains, and from every church tower in Somersetshire ghastly heads looked down on those who gathered there to worship God; in fact, so many bodies were exposed that the whole air was “tainted with corruption and death.”