WILLEM WISSING AND STUDIO | Portrait of James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth and 1st Duke of Buccleuch (1649-85)

Possibly Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609-74), for his gallery at Clarendon House, London, or his son, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon (1638-1709), at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire; 

Purchased by his brother, Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester (1642-1711), together with Cornbury Park and all its contents, in 1697;

By descent at Cornbury, and later The Grove, Hertfordshire, to his son, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Rochester and later 4th Earl of Clarendon (1672-1753);

By transfer to his son, Henry, Viscount Cornbury (1710-53) in 1749, who died without issue;

By inheritance to his niece, Lady Charlotte Capel (1721-90), who married Thomas Villiers, 1st Earl of Clarendon of the second creation (1709-86), and transferred to The Grove, Hertfordshire;

Thence by direct descent to the present owner.

H. Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England, London 1765, vol. II, p. 7;

G.P. Harding, List of Portraits, Pictures in Various Mansions in the United Kingdom, London 1804, vol. II, p. 210;

Lady T. Lewis, Lives of the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, London 1852, vol. III, pp. 255 and 374-76;

A. Fea, King Monmouth, London 1902, p. 329;

R.J.B. Walker, Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Engraving in the Palace of Westminster, London 1960, vol. II, pp. 10-11 and 75-6;

E. Auerbach and C.K. Adams, Painting and Sculpture at Hatfield House, London 1971, pp. 174-75;

D. Piper, A Catalogue of the 17th Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, London 1963, p. 239;

R. Gibson, Catalogue of the Portraits in the collection of the Earl of Clarendon, privately published 1977, no. 105.

Born in Rotterdam, whist his father was in exile, the sitter was the eldest illegitimate son of King Charles II and his mistress, Lucy Walter. In March 1658 Charles had his son kidnapped and placed in the care of Lord Croft, one of his gentlemen of the bedchamber, who was resident in Paris and whose surname the child briefly took. It was not until the summer of 1662, two years after the Restoration, that Charles summoned his son to court. However, James quickly found favour with his father and in February the following year was formally recognised as the King’s son and created Duke of Monmouth, Earl of Doncaster and Baron Scott of Tynedale in the peerage of England, as well as being appointed a Knight of the Garter. On 20 April 1663, just days after his 14th birthday, he was married to the Scottish heiress Anne Scott, suo jure Countess of Buccleuch, whose family name he assumed and the following day the couple were created Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, Earl and Countess of Dalkeith and Lord and Lady Scott of Whitchester and Eskdale in the peerage of Scotland.

At the age of 16 Monmouth, as he became known, served in the English fleet under his uncle, the Duke of York, in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, returning to England in June the following year to take up a post as captain of a troop of horse in the Army. In 1668 he was appointed Colonel on His Majesty’s Own Troop of Horse Guards (the original precursor to today’s Life Guards).

In 1670 he acquired Moor Park in Hertfordshire, which he rebuilt as his principal seat, and at the outbreak of the Third Anglo-Dutch War in 1672 he took command of a brigade of 6,000 English and Scottish troops that were sent to the Netherlands as part of the French army. During the campaign, and particularly at the Seige of Maastricht in June that year, Monmouth distinguished himself in combat and gained a considerable reputation for himself as one of Britain’s finest soldiers. Returning to England, in 1674 he was appointed Master of the Horse and Charles II gave him effective command of all Royal forces.

Monmouth’s military reputation was further enhanced during the Franco-Dutch War, when he particularly distinguished himself at the Battle of St. Denis in 1678 and the following year he was sent in command of a small army to Scotland to put down a rebellion of the Scottish Covenanters. Despite being heavily outnumbered he secured a decisive victory against the rebels at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge. Monmouth’s military prowess, together with his Protestant faith, made him a a popular figure in England and, despite his illegitimacy, he was increasingly becoming seen in many quarters as a viable alternative to his Catholic uncle, James, Duke of York, as heir to the throne. As his popularity with the masses increased, Monmouth was obliged to go into exile in the Dutch United Provinces in September 1679 and in 1683 he was identified by royal agents as a conspirator in the Rye House Plot, which aimed to assassinate both Charles II and his bother James, and place Monmouth on the throne.

Following his father’s death in February 1685, and his uncle’s ascension to the throne as King James II, he led an expedition to England - known today as The Monmouth Rebellion - landing three ships and an army at Lyme Regis in Dorset and marching on London. Monmouth published a declaration in defense of the Protestant religion denouncing James’ claim to the throne and at various places along the march, including Axminster, Chard, Ilminster and Taunton, declared himself as the rightful King, before meeting the royal army at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685 - the last pitched battle on open ground fought on English soil. Monmouth’s makeshift forces were no match for the highly trained royal army, however, and he was soundly defeated.  

Captured, exhausted and abandoned by his supporters a month after the battle, Monmouth was taken to London and convicted for treason. He was beheaded at Tower Hill on 15 July 1585, the axeman reportedly inflicting multiple blows to complete the job - some sources claiming that as many as eight strokes were required. His execution was famously alluded to by Alec Guinness in the film Kind Hearts and Coronets, where the executioner says 'The last execution of a Duke in this country was very badly botched. But that was in the days of the axe.'

Monmouth is here depicted in armour, holding a marshal’s baton, beside a terrestrial globe with an assistant pointing to the coast of Flanders, with a highlighted map of England. This is probably in reference to Monmouth’s victories in the Low Countries during the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars, but could also refer to his claim to the English throne.

A note on provenance

Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon died in 1674, when Monmouth was 25 years old, and it seems more likely, therefore, that this picture was acquired by his son, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon. The 2nd Earl, as Lord Privy Seal in 1685, was in charge of organising resistance to Monmouth’s Rebellion. A letter survives in the Clarendon Papers at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, dated 20 June 1685, from Clarendon to the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, the Earl of Abingdon, instructing him to raise two companies of militia in Oxford in defense of the King and commanding him to secure the city’s loyalty to the crown by locking up anybody suspected of disloyalty.¹ It may well be that the 2nd Earl acquired the portrait in the dispersal of Monmouth’s property following his attainder. Equally Monmouth’s son, James Scott, Earl of Dalkeith, married Henrietta Hyde, the daughter of Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester, who was the 2nd Earl of Clarendon’s younger brother and the man who purchased Cornbury Park and all its contents from his elder brother in order to rescue him from his debts in 1697. It is therefore possible that the portrait entered the Clarendon collection through this family connection.