MONMOUTH, mOn'milth, James, Doxn or, royal 'pretender and claimant to the English. b. Rotterdam, 9 April 1649; d. London,, 25 July 1685. He was the natural son of Charles II and of Lucy Walters, as seems certain from the king's open recognition of him, although he so closely resembled Robert Sidney, whose•mis tress his mother had been, that Sidney has been supposed his father. Placed under the guard-. ianship of Lord Crofts, • he assumed the 'name, of James Crofts and was brought up.in France under the care of Henrietta Maria, the qUeeti dowager; was recognized and summoned to England by his father after the Restoration:: was married to Anne Scott; heiress of Buechluch and made Duke of Monmouth; and served in Holland in 1673. His Protestant sympathies, his clemency to the Scottish Covenanters whom he defeated at Bothwell Bridge (1679), and a story persistently circulated (and denied before Privy Council by the king) that Charles had secretly married his mother in Holland, made him popular with the Protestant party; and. Shaftesbury repeatedly urged the king to legit imatize him and ensure a peaceable Protestant succession, He did his best to exclude James from the throne. After the Rye House Plot
he escaped to Holland. Thence after the ac cession of James II he invaded England, pos sibly with the complicity of William of Orange, called the people to arms, raised a large force of Protestants, was proclaimed king at Taunton, but was defeated by Faversham at Sedgemoor. Taken prisoner he begged for his life from the king to no purpose, and was exectited at the age of 36. He was handsome, weak, fickle and in his claims to the throne no doubt entirely under the control of political plotters: The 'Diaries) of Evelyn' and Pepys give the setting of Monmouth's career; his rising is sketched with some historical verisimilitude in Doyle's 'Micah Clarke) (1888), a' romance. Coniult also Roberts, 'Life of Monmouth) (1844) •and Fea, A., 'King of (New York' 1902) ; the latter work outlines the popular leg end that Monmouth was not executed, a sub stitute having taken his place, and tells how the country people long expected his •return.