DORSET GAOL AND THE MONMOUTH REBELLION. 141 



very few in number. But the entries in the register do not help 

 us here ; first, because those executed, if buried at all, were not 

 buried in a churchyard ; secondly, because none of the names of 

 the condemned are to be found amongst these entries. The 

 "sixteen prisoners" (actually there are 18 at least) buried were 

 those who died of disease in the crowded gaol at different times 

 between November 25th, 1685, and February lyth, 1686. 



Mr. W. Bowies Barrett has given us the complete list of the 

 names of those condemned to death, and also the number of 

 those left in Dorchester Gaol, which seemed to have been at 

 most about 40. Eighteen out of 40 was the awful toll that smallpox 

 and fever levied in about three months. I thought it would be 

 interesting to many that the names of these unfortunate sufferers 

 should be published, I believe for the first time, with the dates 

 of their burials. The first name on the roll of martyrs, one 

 reads with pathetic interest, is that of a stranger in this town 

 Mary Blake, of Taunton spelt phonetically Bleak. She was 

 the misguided lady who organised in Taunton a royal reception 

 for the Duke of Monmouth, working with her 26 pupils the 

 colours that were presented to him on his arrival in that city. 

 She received the title of " Captain of the Virgins." Most of the 

 girls were given to the Court ladies, who made what they could 

 out of their ransoms ; whilst their leader was evidently 

 imprisoned in Dorchester Gaol. How she came to be 

 imprisoned here and not in Taunton I do not know. Naturally 

 enough, a person of her quality would have succumbed early to 

 the attack of smallpox which raged in this unhealthy prison in 

 those fatal autumn months. 



The following is the complete list from our earliest register : 

 1685 Nov. 25th, Mary Bleak, of Taunton, was buried ; 

 Dec. 1 6th, Edward Philpott, a prisoner, ditto; Dec. lyth, 

 Daniel Hockens, ditto ; Dec. 20th, Thomas Hancock, ditto ; 

 Dec. 23rd, Edward Hurle, ditto ; Dec. 28th, Thomas Gillam, 

 ditto. 1686 Jan. 8th, Rodger Ffrench, of Seaton, ditto ; 

 Jan. 1 2th, William Leavridge, ditto ; Jan. 20th, James Harris, 

 ditto ; Jan. 2oth, John Truen and his wife, ditto ; Feb. 3rd, 



