DUKE OF MONMOUTH: LIFE AND REBELLION

James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, may have been the eldest and illegitimate son of a monarch, but when he entered the world his father, Charles II, was a monarch without a kingdom, and with little prospect of getting it back from Parliamentary rule. His mother meanwhile was a commoner with a wanton reputation. His paternal grandfather, Charles I, had recently lost his head upon a scaffold on Whitehall. Due to his illegitimate status, James had no surname of his own. He was no normal royal child - he was born on the cusp of modernity and would become a true child of the 17th century, encapsulating it socially, politically and religiously. From this near hopeless start, little James would go exile in Europe, where he lived in near poverty, to triumphantly rejoicing his father's restoration to the thrones of England and Scotland. Monmouth would become part of one of the most libertine royal courts within Europe. His status as a royal bastard ensured that he was able to rise within the family firm, first by being made a duke, and then by marrying into the most eligible aristocratic family in Scotland. He would become his father's son when it came to matters of the opposite sex; he made a poor husband but a willing and lusty lover. He was also a skilled military man, with experience in the field and at sea, and his ability to communicate with those of all social statuses added to his effectiveness as a military leader, as well as making him popular with the general public. Monmouth deserves to be remembered for more than the failed act of treason against his uncle, James II, and the consequent blundered and bloody forfeit of his life on Tower Hill. The story is also fascinating in that Monmouth was witness to some of Britain's biggest historical events of the 17th century as well as central to political crises, plots and eventually the rebellion that now bears his name. Among these events were the Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of London 1666, the discovery of the so-called Popish Plot 1678, the emergence of political parties, the start of the Exclusion Crisis, the discovery of the Rye House Plot 1683 and the Monmouth Rebellion 1685. And the country was still dealing with the memory of the bloody and divisive Civil War which had its own complexities of state and religion. 145pp, eight pages of plates.