Monmouth's First Rebellion

In July 1685, the Duke of Monmouth led his rebel army to defeat at Sedgemoor. In recent years highlighted for his attention to logistics and popular support, in spite of this, it always seems amazing that Monmouth was willing to risk such an initiative, with little more than hurriedly raised local militias. Yet this is to belittle Monmouth’s experience six years previously, when sent with a Government army, to suppress a Whig Covenanter Rising in South West Scotland. In light of previous attempts, Scots Government officials deemed any such rebellion as a flash in the pan; short-lived, unorganised and unrealistic in its aims.

Yet in 1679, after the Battle of Drumclog, the Covenanters had formed a coherent force along conventional lines, besieged Glasgow, and forced the Scot’s Establishment Government army to seek English support. Far from being a local ‘Pitchfork Rebellion’ this was something different. What did Monmouth see in these Covenanters that convinced him such an armed force could be effective in 1685?

Until recently, the history of the ‘Killing Times’ in Scotland has often been the sole preserve of theological, geneological and political histories, more concerned behind the moral thought process governing both sides of the divide, than the physical process of enacting rebellion. Where it has reached popular or even military history, the period has been relegated to the foot notes. How the Covenanters were able to organise and enact a popular rebellion, or indeed how their Government oppressors suppressed it, has never before been collected in one place.

Equally the battlefields and sites of popular protest, despite isolated monuments erected by Presbyterian congregations, remain unrecognised, often unprotected and almost entirely forgotten, despite having local, national and international significance. Indeed, without the Covenanter Rebellions bloody outcome, the Glorious Revolution and Jacobite Wars may have ended very differently today. Acting as a proving ground for local policing, the list of colourful characters that would late be eulogised during wars against France in the early 18th century is astounding.

Putting the later Covenanter Rebellions in their proper socio-economic, political and military context, Monmouth’s First Rebellion hopes to raise the profile of this oft-forgotten conflict. Through combining expert analysis of training, clothing and tactics, while also being able to walk the ground, this will be essential reading for historians, geneologists, wargamers and reenactors