Excerpted from The Monmouth Rebellion and the Bloody Assizes by Geoff Sawers. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Six weeks after Monmouth's execution, Jeffrey's commission set out to try those rebels, well over 1500 in number, still held in the West Country's overflowing gaols. They were to receive about as much mercy as the duke. Even Evelyn, who almost liked Jeffreys, called him "of nature cruel, and a slave to the Court". The judge was charged with sending regular reports back to the King upon his progress, and it soon became clear that it was not Justice but Retribution that was his business in the West. The King had been badly frightened by the scale of the rebellion against him.
The commission's first stop was Winchester, on the 25th August. There an elderly gentlewoman, Alice Lisle, was charged with sheltering two Dissenters. The two were not (at least they were not named as) rebels, nor had the lady even known what they were doing, but her late husband had been a Cromwellian, and had drawn up Charles I's death warrant in 1649: which guaranteed hers 36 years later. The jury pronounced her Not Guilty: Jeffreys ordered them to reconsider. Again they returned the same verdict. Fuming, Jeffreys thundered at them that should they do so again he would arrest them all for treason. Pale with fear, the jury returned a third time, this time with a Guilty verdict, and the widow was sentenced to be burnt at the stake. In response to appeals, Jeffreys lessened the sentence, but only to beheading. There is an interesting note of Class here: in executions gentry and aristocrats would always be beheaded, commoners burnt or hanged. The result was the same of course, but the process of beheading was seen as more 'dignified', less degrading. the illegality of the trial would be obvious to a schoolboy, but the judge in question was the Lord Chief Justice and most of the West was under virtual Martial Law. He could do as he liked.
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