The Duke of Monmouth: The Bastard Son

James Crofts, later Scott, was born in Rotterdam on 9 April, 1649, he was the illegitimate son of the future King Charles II and his then mistress, Lucy Walter. Although Charles was to sire at least another 11 children out of wedlock, James, his first-born, was always his favourite. Despite his famed fecundity out of wedlock, Charles had no children with his barren Portuguese wife, Catherine of Braganza, so the legitimate heir to the throne remained his Catholic younger brother, James Duke of York. In the on-going religious wars of the 17th century this was to be a thorny issue and was to lead to a constitutional crisis and eventual revolution.

There has been some dispute as to whether or not James Crofts was Charles’s son at all. There was was no striking physical similarity between the two, Crofts was shorter and far better looking, and given Lucy Walter’s reputation for promiscuity and dishonesty another father would not have been out of the question. Even so, Charles readily acknowledged Crofts as his son and lavished honours upon him. He was a spoilt and pampered young man and in 1663, he was created Duke of Monmouth and married to the wealthy Anne, Countess of Buccleuch. But for all his love for his first-born, Charles would never permit him to be King.

Monmouth, however, was to come to think of himself as the great Protestant hero. He was a temperamental young man who could often be spiteful and petulant. He was also gullible and easily led and allowed himself to become the political pawn of the opposition leader, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury. He was popular in the country, at least he believed he was, and was easily swayed by the cheers of a mob, rented or not. He all too readily allowed himself to become the focus of plots against his uncle James, Duke of York, much to the chagrin of his father.

Things were to come to a head during the Exclusion Crisis of 1681. Lord Shaftesbury was the prime mover in a Bill of Exclusion introduced in Parliament on 11 May, 1679. The Bill, if passed, would exclude James from the line of succession. He also introduced a Bill of Attainder against Charles’s Chief Minister Lord Danby, accusing him of treason. Charles, who had been taking money from the Catholic French King Louis XIV, in agreements negotiated by Danby, felt obliged to sacrifice his Chief Minister, who to avoid prosecution fled to the Continent. Shaftesbury was now the leading politician in the country and he had the backing of the majority of Parliament. He now demanded not just the exclusion of James but the legitimisation of Monmouth. In fact, Shaftesbury’s agenda was always greater than the sum of its parts, and he sought not only a Protestant heir to the throne, but a Monarch who would be compliant to the will of Parliament, perhaps even the abolition of the Monarchy itself.  Charles, in response, sent both his brother James and Monmouth into exile and dissolved Parliament, but the problem would not go away. Shaftesbury continued to whip up an anti-Catholic frenzy and Charles himself, who despite being officially Anglican, was rumoured to be a Catholic (he was indeed to convert to Catholicism on his deathbed). Elections held in late 1679 went badly for the Royal Party and Shaftesbury renewed the pressure on Charles by recalling Monmouth from exile. In December, 1679, he rode through the streets of London to the cheers of the crowd, much to the fury of his father. Charles sent his son back into exile with a flea in his ear, he would never be King, he told him. He was determined to secure his father’s legacy, though he had little faith in his brother and predicted, accurately as it turned out, that he would not reign four years, regardless, there would be a legitimate Stuart succession. Shaftesbury, however, maintained the pressure. Despite Monmouth continuing to turn up, much to his fathers dismay, like a bad penny, in 1681, Charles decided to act, he would face down the opposition. He convened a Parliament at Oxford. Here they would vote once and for all on the Exclusion Bill. Charles, as he had expected lost the vote heavily, but he had planned for this. Unlike his father in 1642, he had the money and the military preparations had been made to mobilise quickly. He simply dissolved Parliament and awaited the response. Faced with the prospect of another civil war following so close on the heels of the previous one the opposition crumbled. Shaftesbury was later charged with treason but there was no real desire to re-open old wounds or make a martyr of him and he was cleared of all charges, but he was forced into exile and died soon after. Charles had secured the throne for his brother but he had not changed the mindset of the people, or so it was believed.