Killing of Absalom.
Absalom or Avshalom (Hebrew: אַבְשָלוֹם, Modern*Avshalom, Tiberian*ʼAḇšālōm; "Father of peace") according to the Hebrew Bible was the third son of David, King of Israel with Maachah, daughter of Talmai, King of Geshur.[1]
2*Samuel 14:25 describes him as the most handsome man in the kingdom. Absalom eventually rebelled against his father and was killed during the Battle of Ephraim Wood.
After four years he declared himself king, raised a revolt at Hebron, the former capital, and slept with his father's concubines.[11] All Israel and Judah flocked to him, and David, attended only by the Cherethites and Pelethites and his former bodyguard, which had followed him from Gath, found it expedient to flee. The priests Zadok and Abiathar remained in Jerusalem, and their sons Jonathan and Ahimaaz served as David's spies. Absalom reached the capital and consulted with the renowned Ahithophel (sometimes spelled Achitophel).
David took refuge from Absalom's forces beyond the Jordan River. However, he took the precaution of instructing a servant, Hushai, to infiltrate Absalom's court and subvert it. Hushai convinced Absalom to ignore
Ahithophel's advice to attack his father while he was on the run, and instead to prepare his forces for a major attack. This gave David critical time to prepare his own troops for the coming battle.
Ahitophel (Hebrew: אחיתופל; "Brother of Insipidity", or "Impiety") was a counselor of King David and a man greatly renowned for his sagacity. At the time of Absalom's revolt he deserted David (Psalm. 41:9; 55:12–14) and espoused the cause of Absalom (2 Samuel 15:12).
Ahithophel rendered a service to David upon another occasion; not, however, until he had been again threatened with the curse. It appears that David excavated too deeply for the foundations of the Temple, with the result that earth's deepest floods broke forth, and nearly inundated the earth. None could help but Ahithophel, who withheld his counsel in the hope of seeing David borne away upon the flood. When David again warned him of the malediction, Ahithophel counseled the king to throw a tile, with the ineffable name of God written upon it, into the cavity; whereupon the waters began to sink. Ahithophel is said to have defended his use of the name of God in this emergency by reference to the practice enjoined by Scripture (Num. v. 23) to restore marital harmony; surely a matter of small importance, he argued, compared with the threatened destruction of the world (Suk. 53a, b). (However, the actual text of Num 5:23 does not explicitly mention anything about writing the name of God anywhere. Rather, it says that curses are written in a book which are then blotted out with water, and the woman is made to drink the water, after which she would suffer the curses if she was unfaithful to her husband.) David's repeated malediction that Ahithophel would be hanged was finally realized when the latter hanged himself.
Absalom and Achitophel is a landmark poetic political satire by John Dryden (1631–1700). The poem exists in two parts. The first part, of 1681, is undoubtedly by Dryden. The second part, of 1682, was written by another hand, most likely Nahum Tate, except for a few passages—including attacks on Thomas Shadwell and Elkanah Settle, expressed as Og and Doeg—that Dryden wrote himself.
James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, 1st Duke of Buccleuch KG PC (9 April 1649 – 15 July 1685), was an English nobleman. Originally called James Crofts or James Fitzroy, he was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the eldest illegitimate son of Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland and his mistress Lucy Walter.
He served in the Second Anglo-Dutch War and commanded English troops taking part in the Third Anglo-Dutch War before commanding the Anglo-Dutch brigade fighting in the Franco-Dutch War.
In 1685 he led the unsuccessful Monmouth Rebellion, an attempt to depose his uncle, King James II and VII. After one of his officers declared Monmouth the legitimate King in the town of Taunton in Somerset, Monmouth attempted to capitalise on his position as the son of Charles II, and his Protestantism, in opposition to James, who was a Roman Catholic. The rebellion failed, and Monmouth was beheaded for treason on 15 July 1685.
The Monmouth Rebellion, also known as The Revolt of the West or The West Country rebellion, was an attempt to overthrow James II, the Duke of York who had become King of England, Scotland, and Ireland upon the death of his elder brother Charles II on 6 February 1685. James II was a Roman Catholic, and some Protestants under his rule opposed his kingship. James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of Charles II, claimed to be rightful heir to the throne and attempted to displace James II.
Plans were discussed for several different actions to overthrow the monarch, following the failure of the Rye House Plot to assassinate Charles II and James, in 1683, while Monmouth was in self-imposed exile in the Dutch Republic. The Monmouth rebellion was coordinated with a rebellion in Scotland, where Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Argyll, landed with a small force. The Duke of Monmouth had been popular in the South West of England, so he planned to recruit troops locally and take control of the area before marching on London.
Monmouth landed at Lyme Regis on 11 June 1685. In the following few weeks, his growing army of nonconformists, artisans, and farm workers fought a series of skirmishes with local militias and regular soldiers commanded by Louis de Duras, 2nd Earl of Feversham, and John Churchill, who later became the Duke of Marlborough. Monmouth's forces were unable to compete with the regular army and failed to capture the key city of Bristol. The rebellion ended with the defeat of Monmouth's army at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685 by forces led by Feversham and Churchill.
Monmouth was executed for treason on 15 July 1685. Many of his supporters were tried during the Bloody Assizes, led by Judge Jeffreys, and were condemned to death or transportation. James II was then able to consolidate his power. He reigned until 1688, when he was overthrown in a coup d'état by William of Orange in the Glorious Revolution.