I am sure a lot of you know this already, but this is why there is a strong Somerset connection with Barbados
The Bloody Assizes
Judge Jeffreys then moved his court on to Dorchester to hear the cases of the rebels captured after the collapse of Monmouth’s Rebellion in 1685.
Bishop Gilbert Burnet in his History of His Own Time paints a very unflattering picture of the judge: “His behaviour was beyond anything that was ever heard of in a civilized nation. He was perpetually either drunk or in a rage, more like a fury than the zeal of a judge. He required the prisoners to plead guilty: and in that case he gave them some hope of favour, if they gave him no trouble; otherwise he told them, he would execute the letter of the law upon them in its utmost severity.”
Even so, hundreds who entered a guilty plea were ordered hanged and, says Bishop Burnet, the sentence was carried out immediately, “without allowing them a minute’s time to say their prayers.” There is confusion about exactly how many were executed but the number, in the hundreds, was sufficient to earn Jeffreys the title of The Hanging Judge.
Some of the hanged rebels were decapitated and their heads stuck on spikes outside the judge’s lodging presumably so he could enjoy the fruits of his day’s work while enjoying his supper.
Hundreds more who escaped the noose were banished to the West Indies with their papers marked “Never to Return.” BBC Radio 4 records that, “The ladies-in-waiting at James’s Court made a handsome profit out of the Monmouth rebels who were sold as slaves to Barbados. White slaves commanded good prices in the seventeenth century.”
The Bloody Assizes
Judge Jeffreys then moved his court on to Dorchester to hear the cases of the rebels captured after the collapse of Monmouth’s Rebellion in 1685.
Bishop Gilbert Burnet in his History of His Own Time paints a very unflattering picture of the judge: “His behaviour was beyond anything that was ever heard of in a civilized nation. He was perpetually either drunk or in a rage, more like a fury than the zeal of a judge. He required the prisoners to plead guilty: and in that case he gave them some hope of favour, if they gave him no trouble; otherwise he told them, he would execute the letter of the law upon them in its utmost severity.”
Even so, hundreds who entered a guilty plea were ordered hanged and, says Bishop Burnet, the sentence was carried out immediately, “without allowing them a minute’s time to say their prayers.” There is confusion about exactly how many were executed but the number, in the hundreds, was sufficient to earn Jeffreys the title of The Hanging Judge.
Some of the hanged rebels were decapitated and their heads stuck on spikes outside the judge’s lodging presumably so he could enjoy the fruits of his day’s work while enjoying his supper.
Hundreds more who escaped the noose were banished to the West Indies with their papers marked “Never to Return.” BBC Radio 4 records that, “The ladies-in-waiting at James’s Court made a handsome profit out of the Monmouth rebels who were sold as slaves to Barbados. White slaves commanded good prices in the seventeenth century.”
