POLITICAL HISTORY 



the Restoration upon the Independents of the borough, and who had waited 

 upon Charles II in 1684 about the surrender of the charter^), had ridden to 

 Honiton and to London to raise the alarm.'' On the 18 th Monmouth marched 

 to Taunton. 



After Sedgemoor, making his way towards Hampshire he was captured at 

 Woodyates, just within the Dorset boundary, the horses having failed in 

 Cranborne Chase.' Lord Lumley's scouts — sent out all over Dorset — had 

 done their work. 



Kirke and his 'Lambs' did not, it is true, make Dorsetshire the scene of 

 their operations. But the vengeance of James, though delayed till Jeffreys 

 appeared, was not less certain. Early in September, the day after the 

 execution of Alice, styled Lady Lisle, Jeffreys came to Dorchester.* A copy 

 survives of the Presentment to the Court at these ' Bloody Assizes,' made for 

 one of the four judges, or for the Clerk of the Assize.' Two hundred and 

 fifty-one were sentenced at Dorchester ; they were drawn from each of the 

 coast towns, with twelve from Sherborne." A terrible ' Butchers' Bill,' 

 methodically calculated, in the manuscripts of the Weymouth Corporation,^ 

 testifies to their sufferings. But in Dorset, as elsewhere, the rebels were 

 entirely confined to the middle and lower classes, none of the gentry supporting 

 Monmouth.' 



Dorset was no better satisfied with the accession of William and Mary 

 than it had been with the return of the Stuarts. There was no active 

 sedition, but a certain amount of quiet non-juring, and one may suspect 

 much concealed dissatisfaction. Weymouth, which in 1662 had restored 

 certain Royalist aldermen displaced in 1 648,' suffered disqualification of no 

 less than seventeen aldermen and capital burgesses, through their not taking 

 the oaths under William and Mary." At the same time Howson, minister of 

 All Saints, Dorchester, wrote : ' Our little government of this borough is 

 composed of very ill members, who have been very backward in all public 

 demonstration of joy, either for His Majesty's glorious accession, or his success 

 against his enemies.' " 



In 1705 Defoe was concerned in scheming for Harley, apparently of no 

 very dangerous or matured character, his correspondent and accomplice at 

 Weymouth being a certain Fenner, a dissenting minister. Jonathan Edwards 

 (the Anglican, not the American divine) was also concerned in it. The 

 bearer of letters between them, James Turner of the Diligence privateer, 

 turned queen's evidence, and they were all included in a warrant to bring 

 them to Dorchester, as having received traitorous letters.^' Defoe speaks of 

 the matter in his Review of the Affairs of France}^ 



' Roberts Hist. Lyme, 121, 122. ' Lords Joum. 13 June, 1685. 



' 'Account of the Manner of Taking the late Duke of Monmouth.' -\^^ B.M. ; Burnet, Hist. \, 644. 



* See 'A Relation of the Great Sufferings of H. Pitman,' reprinted in Arber's English Gamer, 337. 



' B.M. Add. MS. 30077. 



' Account of the Proceedings against the Rebels '^^-. A list of the names of the Rebels ~^. 



' Weymouth Chart, (ed. Moule), p. 85. 



' Broadsides illustrating the history of the rebellion in Dorset are printed in cxtenso in Somers. and Dors. 

 Notes and Queries, viii, 160 et seq. ; viii, 224 et seq. ; viii, 342 et scq. 



' Weymouth Chart. 119. '" Ibid. 122. " Cal. S.P. Dom. 1689-90, p. 280. 



" Weymouth Chart, iii, 142. 



" Preface to vol. vi, reprinted G. A. Aitken, Later Stuart Tracts, 245 ; Etig. Hist. Rev. xv, 243 ; Hist. 

 MSS. Com. Rep. xv, 10. 



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