Abstract
Not everyone will agree with Christopher Scott’s main thesis, but the author of this thought-provoking study of the Monmouth rebellion (1685) makes a welcome contribution to an aspect of Restoration history which is still characterized by simplistic or biased views of the malfunctioning of local militias in times of crisis. Christopher Scott can boast of a profound knowledge of western county archives, combined with a genuine enthusiasm for field work. The author has visited just about every Devon and Dorset village and one can only bow to the quasi-archaeological quality of his findings. The reader is offered a lively and indeed visual picture – the author is an amateur photographer – of the rebels’ itinerary from their landing at Lyme Regis on 11 June 1685 to their ultimate defeat against James II’s army at Sedgemoor on 6 July.
The Monmouth rebellion has gone down in history as a narrative of romantic failure and cynical cruelty, in which Monmouth, the ‘Protestant Duke’ who never became King, was opposed by Judge Jeffreys, the cold executor of James II’s vengeance. Scott tackles the story from a different angle, calling into question the standard argument that Monmouth’s initial success resulted from strong non-conformist support and, more importantly, weak defensive capabilities in the western counties. It is Scott’s controversial contention that ‘the militia made an effective military contribution to containing and suppressing the rebellion’ (p.275). The story of Sedgemoor as the triumph of professional armies over local amateur forces is therefore to be seen as a myth that has obscured our knowledge of militia logistics and organization on the ground.
One of the problems comes from the available sources. Militia records are not only ‘sparse’ (p.20) – as Scott rightly argues – but they are notoriously dull. Very few Lieutenancy books have been published. Other militia records include accounts, endless lists of militiamen, marching orders, muster rolls, administrative correspondence and, with a bit of luck, blueprints for a reformed militia. Scott can be credited for defeating any prejudice against militia records, making the best, for example, of a muster roll bearing the name of John Wyndham, a colonel in the Wiltshire militia (pp.66 and 96). The bibliography testifies to the wealth of local archives used by the author.
The Maligned Militia is the work of a scrupulous empirical historian. The reader will learn a great deal about the everyday life of militiamen: how they were mustered, how they were drilled, how they were billeted, how they were paid, how they were dressed and what they looked like. These men are not to be seen, according to Scott, as the hapless members of a local ‘gentleman’s club’ (p.2), prone to drinking and desertion, but as a proper army that suffered from bureaucratic inertia rather than lack of courage or military expertise. Scott’s ‘constructed model of effectiveness’ is based on a set of criteria he believes the late Stuart militia met during the crisis of 1685. For example, the failure of the militia at Axminster on 15 June should not overshadow the success of local militias in closing the ports of Bristol and Exeter to ‘potential rebel support’ (p.202) – if any could have come from the sea.
The West Country militia played an important role in disrupting Monmouth’s lines of communication, effectively paving the way for the intervention of James’ army. Local militias, in other words, served as a necessary complement to the King’s standing army. Scott’s book will be of great use to local, military or even social historians interested in the logistics of war. It may be of less value to political historians who consider contemporary perceptions of the militia, however flawed they often were, as a valuable source rather than a fatally misleading source for scholarly inquiry.