The Rye House plot gave an excuse for arresting the Whig leaders; Russell and Sidney were judicially murdered; Monmouth retired to Toddington, and was left untouched. By two submissive letters, he reconciled himself with the help of Halifax both to the king and to James, though he had the humiliation of seeing his confessions and declarations of penitence published in the Gazette. His partial return to favour raised the hopes of his partisans; to check these, Algernon Sidney was executed. Monmouth was now subpoenaed to give evidence at the trial of young Hampden. To escape from the difficulty he fled to Holland, probably with Charles's connivance, and though he visited England in Nov. 1684, it is doubtful whether he ever again saw the king. The quiet accession of James II. soon brought Monmouth to the crisis of his fate. Within two months of Charles's death he had yielded to the impetuosity of Argyll and other exiles and to vague invitations from England.
On the 2nd of May Argyll sailed with three ships to raise the west of Scotland; and three weeks later, with a following of only eighty-two persons—of whom Lord Grey, Fletcher of Saltoun, Wade, and Ferguson, the author of the Appeal from the Country to the City, were the chief—Monmouth himself set out for the west. of England, the stronghold of Protestant dissent. He gained little sympathy, but soon collected an undisciplined body of some 1,500 men, with whom he seized Axminster, and entered Taunton.
Meanwhile parliament had declared it treason to assert Mon mouth's legitimacy, or his title to the crown; a reward of 15,000 was offered for him dead or alive, and an act of attainder was passed in unusual haste. Troops had been hurriedly sent to meet him, and when he reached Bridgwater Albemarle was already in his rear. From Bridgwater the army marched through Glaston
bury to attack Bristol, into which Lord Feversham had hastily thrown a regiment of foot-guards. The attempt miscarried ; and, after summoning Bath in vain, Monmouth, with a disordered force, began his retrograde march through Philips Norton and Frome, continually harassed by Feversham's soldiers. At the latter place he heard of Argyll's total rout in the western Highlands. On July the 5th, Feversham entered Sedgemoor in pursuit ; Monmouth the same night attempted a surprise, but his troops were hope lessly routed. He himself, with Grey and a few others, fled over the Mendip Hills to the New Forest, hoping to escape by sea, but he was captured close to Ringwood in Hampshire on the 8th.
On the day of his capture Monmouth wrote to James in terms of the most unmanly contrition, ascribing his wrong-doings to the action of others, and imploring an interview. This was granted on the 13th and after another imploring letter to the king, he offered, as the last hope, to become a Roman Catholic; this might have proved successful, but the priests sent by James to ascertain his sincerity declared that he cared only for his life and not for his soul.
He met his death at the scaffold on July 15, 1685, with calm ness and dignity. In a signed paper he expressed sorrow for having assumed the royal style, and at the last moment confessed that Charles had denied to him privately, as he had publicly, that he was ever married to Lucy Walters.
See G. Roberts, Life, Progresses, and Rebellion of James, Duke of Monmouth (2 vols. 5844), the article in the Dict. Nat. Biog. and gen eral bibliography given in Camb. Mediaeval Hist. (vol. 5, chaps. 8 and 9, 1908).