On June 28th 1685 Richard Rumbold, an English Cromwellian soldier was executed in Edinburgh.
Rumbold was accused in 1683 of being the main instigator of a plot to kill King Charles II and his brother James, Duke of York, in an attempt to assassinate the royal couple as they passed by Rye House, on their return from Newmarket Races, it became known as The Rye House Plot.
Historians still debate each other on the actual plot but most agree Rumbold was a minor character in a very widespread plot, involving many leading Republican members of the British aristocracy. In fact, some historians believe the plot was fabricated by King Charles in order to execute his opponents in the Whig party, which he did, and although some were no doubt guilty of conspiring, several innocent men were put to death. This was mainly part of English history, hence few of us here will know a great deal about it, so I will get to the Scottish part.
When the conspiracy was discovered Rumbold fled initially to Holland, home of many exiled opponents of the Stuarts. In 1685, after the death of Charles a further plot was hatched among the émigrés to dislodge King James VII/II, his Catholic successor, from the throne. This was to take the form of a two-pronged attack on the British Isles: the first on Scotland under the leadership of Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll (who shall crop up again in a post in couple of days) and the second on the west of England under The Duke of Monmouth.
Rumbold accompanied Argyll to Scotland, and was made a colonel in the small army. But the whole enterprise, badly mismanaged, fell apart. Argyll and Rumbold were both captured. Rumbold was executed in either the June 26th or 28th, there are differing accounts.
The following is an account of his execution…..
In a cart, bareheaded, and heavily manacled,he was conveyed from the Water Gate to the Castle, escorted by Graham’s City Guard, with drums beating, and on the 28th of June he was hanged, drawn, and quartered, at the Cross, where his heart was torn from his breast, an exhibited, dripping and reeking, by the executioner, on the point of a plug-bayonet, while he exclaimed, “Behold the heart of Richard Rumbold, a bloody English traitor and murderer!”
Afterwards his head, was placed on the West Port, then sent to London on the 4th of August, while his quarters were gibbeted in the four principal cities in Scotland.
I will follow this post with Argyll’s execution which happened two days later.
You can find the condemned mans last speech on the link below, although he didn’t finish it, complaining that the drum beats (were) “so disingenuous as to interrupt a dying man.”https://www.bartleby.com/268/3/15.html
