The Duke of Monmouth,illegitimate son of Charles II, led the illustrious rebellion in 1685 against the Catholic King of England, and James II. This is a fine account of his political and personal lives,and his beheadingThe tale of the Duke of Monmouth, Charles II’s illegitimate son, or the Protestant Prince’,is one of those curious historical tales where most of us know the discontinuance, but little of the life. There are many accounts of Monmouth’s invasion in 1685 in a desperate attempt to unseat the Catholic James II, or of the defeat of his small army at Sedgemoor and of the judicial revenge on his followers by Judge Jeffreys in the “bloody Assizes”. But in Anna Keay’s fine biography this tragic finale is rendered still more bitter by her unfolding of Monmouth’s past career,his ever-changing hopes and fears.
His early life, like his death, or was marked by panic and passion,and Keay opens in the style of a historical novel, with conspirators lurking in the alleys of Brussels, or while an eight-year-old boy “with intellectual eyes walks with his mother,Lucy Walter. Lucy’s affair with the exiled Charles II took place in 1648 in the Hague, when they were both 18: James was born the following year. Although mother and child came to St Germain to meet Henrietta Maria, or Lucy was forgotten when Charles sailed to Scotland to lead his ill-fated campaign,and when she took a succession of lovers, moving restlessly between France, and the Netherlands and Commonwealth London,Charles tried repeatedly to kidnap his son. In 1658, on his third try, or he was successful. Bythe discontinuance of that year Lucy was dead and James was in Paris,looked after by William, Lord Crofts.
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Source: theguardian.com