Counting the dead
Sir: Count Nikolai Tolstoy is evidently as unlucky with his 17th-century history as he is with his 20th (Letters, 13 December). Monmouth's army never numbered '13,500 foot and horse'. Contemporary estimates of his forces at the battle of Sedgemoor vary between over 7,000 and 3,200. He probably had nearly 4,000 (largely untrained) men while the government had some 2,500 regu- lars — plus the (possibly unreliable) Wilt- shire militia well in the rear. Tolstoy's claim that James II's army 'was outnumbered by three to one' is therefore absurd.
Certainly the massacre of Glencoe was a disgraceful and treacherous display of state terrorism, but the casualties were relatively few compared with those caused by Jef- freys' judicial 'campaign' (James II's word) after Sedgemoor. Tolstoy attempts to excuse that campaign by claiming that Monmouth's rebellion 'had all but over- thrown' the government. That, too, is a considerable exaggeration, but in any case the judicial toll in 1685 was heavier than that exacted by Henry VIII after the Pil- grimage of Grace or by Mary after Wyatt's rebellion. Only Elizabeth's, after the rising of the Northern Earls, exceeded it.
The rebels convicted by Jeffreys in 1685 were hanged, drawn and quartered, and their executions took longer than their tri- als. Even so, Tolstoy seems unduly impressed by James II having graciously commuted 'the prescribed judicial punish- ment of burning' on the 70-year-old Alice Lisle 'to one of beheading'. No doubt she was grateful, but she was still a victim of judicial murder.
Gilmour
The Ferry House, Old Isleworth, Middlesex
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