The slaughter at Sedgemoor and the execution of the Duke of Monmouth were partly forgotten in the greater horror excited by the unsparing severity of Judge Jefferies in condemning to death hundreds of persons who were charged with being concerned in the rebellion. I have met with one illustrated tract relating to the 'Bloody Assize.' It is inserted at the end of the volume of the _London Gazette_ for 1685, and has apparently been added by Dr. Burney, the collector, as bearing upon the events of the time. It forms no part of the _London Gazette_, though bound up with it. There is a rough woodcut on the title-page containing eleven portraits, and the title is as follows:-- '_The Protestant Martyrs; or the Bloody Assizes, giving an account of the Lives, Tryals, and Dying Speeches, of all those eminent Protestants that suffered in the West of England by the sentence of that bloody and cruel Judge Jefferies; being in all_ 251 _persons, besides what were hanged and destroyed in cold blood. Containing also the Life and Death of James Duke of Monmouth; His Birth and Education; His Actions both at Home and Abroad; His Unfortunate Adventure in the West; His Letter to King James; His Sentence, Execution and Dying-words upon the Scaffold; with a true Copy of the Paper he left behind him. And many other curious Remarks worth the Readers Observation. London, Printed by F. Bradford; at the Bible in Fetter Lane._' At the end of the pamphlet is printed this curious sentence:--'This Bloody Tragedy in the West being over our Protestant Judge returns for London; soon after which Alderman Cornish felt the Anger of Somebody behind the Curtain.' Alderman Cornish was afterwards executed at the corner of King Street, Cheapside, for alleged participation in the Rye House Plot. [Illustration: MARTYRS OF THE BLOODY ASSIZES, 1685.] This fragment of contemporary history shows that if there were no regular newspapers to supply the people with illustrated news they obtained it in the shape of cheap fly-sheets and broadsides--the form in which it was supplied to them before newspapers began.