cahn

So, I recalled that I actually have a biography of Monmouth in Munich, not just the novel, checked out the passages about his execution and about the treatment of his followers, and reality is actually worse than what I recalled from fiction. Firstly, the rebels's fates excepting Monmouth himself, aka The Bloody Assizes, presided over by one Judge Jeffreys, whom James II. had elevated to the House of Lords and whom he would subsequently, i.e. after what Jeffreys did here, make Lord Chancellor:

The scale of the mass justice on that autumn of 1685 was eyewatering. ON a single day in September over 540 prisoners were tried and sentenced. Jeffreys told the incarcerated rebels that if they pleaded guilty the King would s how mercy. He was expected to execute only the ringleaders, and that made sense. After all, the rank and file of the New Model Army - i.e. the Republican English army that had fought against Charles I. under Cromwell - had not been tried, let alone executed, in 1660. Instead it was the signatories of Charles I.'s death warrant who had been hunted down. Even in the rebellions of the 16th century the vast majority of grassroots recruits were pardoned.
After watching the first few who pleaded 'not guilty' being almost immediately condemned and executed, most of the remaining rebels did was Jeffreys advised and were accordingly convicted of 'levying war against the king' and other related crimes. But the horrifying realisation soon came that this time, there would be almost no clemency. Over the weeks that followed 250 people would be hanged, drawn and quartered, while a further 850 were to be transported to the West Indies for ten years labour. In all over 90 per cent were either executed or deported, and fewer than ten per cent pardoned.
The scale of the executions was such that the hangman Jack Ketch, who had so mutilated Monmouth on Tower Hill, complained that even with an assistant, one Pascha Rose, he could not hang, draw and quarter twenty-nine people in one day as he was being asked to. After the sentencing, the hangings themselves were systematically distributed across thirty-seven locations in orst, Devon and Somerset to maximise their impact. (...) Jeffreys' lack of pity for the rebels was unsurprising, but it added to the profound sense of shock. One young woman of Lyme Regis pleaded on her knees before the judge to spare the life of her fiancé. The judge was reported to have looked down at her and to have remarked with a smirk that 'he could only spare her part of him; but as he knew what she wanted, it should be that part which she liked best, and he would give orders to the sheriff accordingly.' The sight and smell of the mutilated corpses, mounted as macabre trophies, was too much for many to bear. John Langford of Dorcester cut down the quarters of a friend, judging the consequent punishment worth enduring.
It was not just the rebels themselves who were given severe sentences. ON his very first day in court Jeffreys tried the sevent-year-old Lady Alice Lisle, who though deaf and infirm was accused of allowing rebels to sleep in her stables. She maintained her innocence throughout and it was only through relentless hectoring and bullying the jury over many hours, and after rejecting a not guilty verdict three times, that Jeffreys was able to force a conviction. When he did so, he remarked with satisfaction that ' if I had been among you and she had been my own mother, I should have found her guilty'. Despite a barrage of pleas for her life, Alice Lisle was hanged six days later. Another woman accused of aiding the rebels was Elizabeth Gaunt, a tallow chandler who had lodged with Mrs. Smith in Amsterdam. The crime for which she was tried was that of helping to arrange a passage out of London for one James Burton, who was testifying against her to save his own skin. She was found guilty and on 23 October 1685 was burned alive at Tyburn. As the pyre was lit she held up a Bible and declared in a clear voice she died to defend it. She would be the last woman in English history to be executed for treason.

(From "The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth" by Anna Keay.)

(Jeffreys is a rare case of karma catching up with someone: when James II. had to flee the country, Jeffreys was arrested for treason and died in the Tower (of illness) before he could be brought to trial.)
(One could make a case that Hannoverians had learned how to treat rebels from James?)