Monmouth! A Monmouth!

 After a good degree of quiet on this blog, let’s see if I can add something more consistent! 

While it may not come through on previous posts (and by the name of the blog), I do a lot of historical wargaming (painting, etc) as well as Warhammer/Fantasy/Sci-fi stuff. This is a somewhat eclectic mix of periods, but a lot of it is horse and musket, Napoleonic, and 19th century era conflicts. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a musket and a good set of gaiters.

The Monmouth Rebellion is one of the more recent ones I’ve been working on (over the last year or so). The rebellion itself occurred in 1685 (alongside the Argyll Uprising). Many folk will be familiar with at least the name and some broad sweeps of the history.

OMy interest was actually spurred on my one of Helion’s wargaming books, One King, by Stephen Carter (alongside Carter’s other book from Helion on the Monmouth Rebellion, Fighting for Liberty). While I’d always liked the look of the wider era, this pushed me over the edge. Queue several trips to Wargames Foundry’s website over the last year or so.

As to a bit of potted history to the build up to the conflict:

Broadly, the Monmouth Rebellion and Argyll Uprising were an attempt by the Whigs to replace King James II & VII. James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, was the son of King Charles II, and favoured by the Whig Party for succession instead of Charles’ brother James, Duke of York (don’t we love a conflict where the leaders of both sides have the same name…). The Whigs opposed absolute monarchy and Catholic emancipation. The accession of York was therefore something they were not particularly keen on, as he was Catholic.

While Charles II was alive, he played the factions off against each other, sometimes favouring one side, then the other. Towards the end of his reign however, York and the Court Party were in favour, and Monmouth had been exiled. York effectively controlled Whitehall by 1683, and many prominent Whigs had been exiled, with others fleeing into exile. While there are signs that Charles may have switched his view at the end of his reign as he recognised the strength of the Court Party and again may have looked to play the parties off against each other, York was firmly in control when Charles died. 

The exiled Whigs regarded armed revolt as their only real course of action. A number of plans were set in motion, but to cut a long story short, in 1685 Monmouth and Argyll had been reconciled and agreed to invade. Things, as ever, didn’t go exactly to plan: Monmouth needed longer to prepare, Argyll felt he had to sail earlier due to Government crackdowns in Scotland, and further uprisings (such as those planned in Chester) didn’t occur.

While we may return to Argyll’s story later on (it doesn’t end well) for now we will continue to follow Monmouth, who landed at Lyme on 11th June 1685, and began to recruit in a fair receptive environment. The inevitable march to Sedgemoor awaits…