George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys of Wem

Is it not strange, asked Halifax, that you should have requested the good offices of one whose arts had brought your head into peril? Not at all, said Hampton.

To whom was I to apply except to the men who were in power? I applied to Lord Jeffreys, I applied to Father Peter, and I paid them six thousand pounds for their services.

But did Lord Halifax take any money? No, I cannot say that he did.

And, Mr. Hampton, did you not afterwards send your wife to thank him for his kindness? Yes, I believe I did, answered Hampton, but I know of no solid effects of that kindness.

To this it was answered that Armstrong had not yielded himself, that he had been dragged to the bar a prisoner.

and that he had no right to claim a privilege which was evidently meant to be given only to persons who voluntarily rendered themselves up to public justice.

Jeffreys and the other judges unanimously overruled Armstrong's objection, and granted the award of execution.

Then followed one of the most terrible of the many terrible scenes which, in those times, disgraced our courts.

Who?

He was a baron, the first Baron Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

Oh.

Judge Jeffreys of the Bloody Assizes.

Hmm.

Look at those eyes, gray and merciless.

Is it not strange, asked Halifax, that you should have requested the good offices of one whose arts had brought your head into peril? Not at all, said Hampton.

To whom was I to apply except to the men who were in power? I applied to Lord Jeffreys, I applied to Father Peter, and I paid them six thousand pounds for their services.

But did Lord Halifax take any money? No, I cannot say that he did.

And, Mr. Hampton, did you not afterwards send your wife to thank him for his kindness? Yes, I believe I did, answered Hampton, but I know of no solid effects of that kindness.

Armstrong represented that a year had not elapsed since he had been outlawed, and that by an act passed in the reign of Edward VI, an outlaw who yielded himself within the year was entitled to plead not guilty, and to put himself on his country.

To this it was answered that Armstrong had not yielded himself, that he had been dragged to the bar a prisoner, and that he had no right to claim a privilege which was evidently meant to be given only to persons who voluntarily rendered themselves up to public justice.

Jeffreys and the other judges unanimously overruled Armstrong's objection, and granted the award of execution.

then followed one of the most terrible of the many terrible scenes which, in those times, disgraced our courts.

Today, we're unpacking the bloody aftermath of Monmouth's rebellion and Judge Jeffreys' infamous trials, seeing how justice was turned into political terror.

What happened in the aftermath of Monmouth's rebellion was less a series of individual trials than a campaign of political terror aimed at stifling dissent across the West Country.

The judge who led it, George Jeffreys, had risen from a Welsh law clerk to Lord High Chancellor under James, and his loyalty to the king left no doubt that he would wield power with brutal precision.

His first appearance at Winchester on the twenty-fifth of August sixteen eighty-five was as much an exhibition of royal authority as a judicial hearing.

The very fact that he sat in a court set up expressly for these proceedings signaled a pre-planned spectacle.

Jeffreys assembled four fellow judges, all men of experience and to some extent zeal, and together they conducted around three hundred cases over the next months, each one a small-scale war between law and retribution.

The numbers are striking.

Approximately two hundred men were hanged, drawn, and quartered, while eight hundred more were sentenced to transportation to the West Indies.

His court demanded swift retribution to deter future challenges.

His trial fell before a special assize chaired by Chief Justice George Jeffreys, infamous for his merciless sentencing.

He was convicted of treason and condemned to be executed at the Tower of London.

The execution took place on the fifteenth July, sixteen eighty-five, when Monmouth’s head was removed with an ax in a ceremony that shocked London’s populace and stunned royalist soldiers alike.