In 1685, Judge George Jeffreys presided over harsh trials after the failed Monmouth Rebellion against James II. Hundreds were executed or transported. The proceedings became notorious as an example of judicial cruelty serving royal authority.

The Bloody Assizes entered Whig memory as a lesson in tyranny, vengeance, and corrupted law. Later poets and novelists used Jeffreys and James II as figures of arbitrary power, helping to frame the Glorious Revolution as moral deliverance.