Of all the cases tried in the course of that terrible circuit, justly
known as the Bloody Assizes, the only one that survives at all in the
popular memory is the case of the Lady Alice Lisle. Her advanced age,
the fact that she was the first woman known in English history to have
suffered death for no worse an offence than that of having exercised the
feminine prerogative of mercy, and the further fact that, even so, this
offence--technical as it was--was never fully proved against her, are
all circumstances which have left their indelible stamp of horror upon
the public mind. There is also the further circumstance that hers was
the first case tried in the West by that terrible Chief Justice, Baron
Jeffreys of Wem.
But the feature that renders her case peculiarly interesting to the
historical psychologist--and it is a feature that is in danger of being
overlooked--is that she cannot really be said to have suffered for the
technical offence for which she took her trial. That was the pretext
rather than the cause. In reality she was the innocent victim of a
relentless, undiscerning Nemesis.
The battle of Sedgemoor had been fought and lost by the Protestant
champion, James, Duke of Monmouth. In the West, which had answered the
Duke's summons to revolt, there was established now a horrible reign of
terror reflecting the bigoted, pitiless, vindictive nature of the King.
Faversham had left Colonel Percy Kirke in command at Bridgwater, a
ruthless ruffian, who at one time had commanded the Tangier garrison,
and whose men were full worthy of their commander. Kirke's Lambs they
were called, in an irony provoked by the emblem of the Paschal Lamb on
the flag of this, the First Tangier Regiment, originally levied to wage
war upon the infidel.
From Bridgwater Colonel Kirke made a horrible punitive progress to
Taunton, where he put up at the White Hart Inn. Now, there was a very
solid signpost standing upon a triangular patch of green before the
door of the White Hart, and Colonel Kirke conceived the quite facetious
notion of converting this advertisement of hospitality into a gallows--a
signpost of temporal welfare into a signpost of eternity. So forth he
fetched the prisoners he had brought in chains from Bridgwater, and
proceeded, without any form of trial whatsoever, to string them up
before the inn. The story runs that as they were hoisted to that
improvised gibbet, Kirke and his officers, standing at the windows,
raised their glasses to pledge their happy deliverance; then, when
the victims began to kick convulsively, Kirke would order the drums
to strike up, so that the gentlemen might have music for their better
dancing.
The colonel, you see, was a humorist, as humour was then understood upon
the northern shores of Africa, where he had been schooled.
When, eventually, Colonel Kirke was recalled and reprimanded, it was not
because of his barbarities many of which transcend the possibilities of
decent print--but because of a lenity which this venal gentleman began
to display when he discovered that many of his victims were willing to
pay handsomely for mercy.
Meanwhile, under his reign of terror, men who had cause to fear the
terrible hand of the King's vengeance went into hiding wherever they
could. Among those who escaped into Hampshire, thinking themselves safer
in a county that had not participated in the war, were a dissenting
parson named George Hicks, who had been in Monmouth's army, and a lawyer
named Richard Nelthorp, outlawed for participation in the Rye House
Plot. In his desperate quest for shelter, Hicks bethought him of the
charitable Nonconformist lady of Moyle's Court, the widow of that John
Lisle who had been one of Cromwell's Lords Commissioners of the Great
Seal, and most active in bringing King Charles I to justice.
John Lisle had fled to Switzerland at the Restoration; but Stuart
vengeance had followed him, set a price upon his head, and procured
his murder at Lausanne. That was twenty years ago. Since then his lady,
because she was known to have befriended and sheltered many Royalists,
and because she had some stout Tory friends to plead for her, was
allowed to remain in tranquil possession of her estates. And there the
Lady Alice Lisle--so called by courtesy, since Cromwell's titles did not
at law survive the Restoration--might have ended her days in peace, but
that it was written that those who hated her--innocent and aged though
she was--for the name she bore, who included her in the rancour which
had procured her husband's assassination, were to be fully satisfied.
And the instrument of fate was this parson Hicks. He prevailed upon
Dunne, a baker of Warminster, and a Nonconformist, to convey to the Lady
Lisle his prayer for shelter. With that message Dunne set out on July
25th for Ellingham, a journey of some twenty miles. He went by way of
Fovant and Chalk to Salisbury Plain. But as he did not know the way
thence, he sought out a co-religionist named Barter, who undertook, for
a consideration, to go with him and direct him.
Together the pair came in the late afternoon of that Saturday to the
handsome house of Moyle's Court, and to my lady's steward, who received
them. Dunne, who appears to have been silly and imprudent, states that
he is sent to know if my lady will entertain a minister named Hicks.
Carpenter, the steward, a staid, elderly fellow, took fright at once.
Although he may not have associated an absconding Presbyterian parson
with the late rebellion, he must have supposed at least that he was one
of those against whom there were warrants for preaching in forbidden
private meetings. So to her ladyship above stairs Carpenter conveyed a
warning with the message.
But that slight, frail, homely lady of seventy, with kindly eyes of
a faded blue, smiled upon his fears. She had sheltered fugitives
before--in the old days of the Commonwealth--and nothing but good had
ever come of it. She would see this messenger.
With misgivings, Carpenter haled Dunne into her presence, and left them
alone together. The impression conveyed by Dunne was that Hicks was
in hiding from the warrants that were out against all Nonconformist
preachers. But when he mentioned that Hicks had a companion, she desired
to know his name.
“I do not know, my lady. But I do not think he has been in the army,
either.”
She considered a while. But in the end pity conquered doubt in her
sweetly charitable soul.
“Very well,” she said, “I will give them entertainment for a week.
Bring them on Tuesday after dark, and come by the back way through the
orchard, that they may not be seen.”
And upon this she rose, and took up an ebony cane, herself to reconduct
him and to see to his entertainment before he left. Not until they came
to the kitchen did she realize that he had a companion. At sight of
Barter, who rose respectfully when she entered, she checked, turned to
Dunne, and whispered something, to which his answer provoked from her a
laugh.
Now Barter, intrigued by this whispering and laughing, of which he
deemed himself the object, questioned Dunne upon it as they rode forth
again together.
“She asked me if you knew aught of the business,” replied Dunne; “and I
answered 'No.”'
“Business, say'st thou?” quoth Barter. “What business?”
“Sure, the business on which we came,” Dunne evaded; and he laughed.
It was an answer that left Barter uneasy. Nor was his mind set at rest
by the parting words with which Dunne accompanied the half-crown for his
services.
“This is but an earnest of what's to come if you will meet me here on
Tuesday to show me the way to Moyle's Court again. I shall be bringing
two gentlemen with me--wealthy men, of a half-score thousand pounds a
year apiece. I tell you there will be a fine booty for my part, so fine
that I shall never want for money again all the days of my life. And, so
that you meet us here, you too may count upon a handsome reward.”
Consenting, Barter went his ways home. But as he pondered Dunne's silly
speech, and marvelled that honest men should pay so disproportionately
for an honest service, he came to the reasonable conclusion that he had
to do with rebels. This made him so uneasy that he resolved at last to
lodge information with the nearest justice.
Now, it happened, by the irony of Fate, that the justice sought by
Barter was one Colonel Penruddock--the vindictive son of that Penruddock
whom the late John Lisle--whilst Lord President of the High Court--had
sentenced to death some thirty years ago for participation in an
unsuccessful Wiltshire rising against the Commonwealth.
The colonel, a lean, stark man of forty-five, heard with interest
Barter's story.
“Art an honest fellow!” he commended him. “What are the names of these
rogues?”
“The fellow named no names, sir.”
“Well, well, we shall discover that for ourselves when we come to take
them at this trysting-place. Whither do you say you are to conduct
them?”
“To Moyle's Court, sir, where my Lady Lisle is to give them
entertainment.”
The colonel stared a moment; then a heavy smile came to light the
saturnine face under the heavy periwig. Beyond that he gave no sign of
what was passing in his mind.
“You may go,” he said slowly, at last. “Be sure we shall be at the tryst
to take these rascals.”
But the colonel did not keep his promise. To Barter's surprise, there
were no soldiers at the tryst on Salisbury Plain on the following
Tuesday; and he was suffered to lead Dunne and the two men with him the
short, corpulent Mr. Hicks and the long, lean Nelthorp--to Moyle's Court
without interference.
The rich reward that Dunne had promised him amounted in actual fact
to five shillings, that he had from Nelthorpe at parting. Puzzled by
Colonel Penruddock's failure to do his part, Barter went off at once
to the colonel's house to inform him that the pair were now at Lady
Lisle's.
“Why, that is very well,” said the colonel, his smile more sinister than
ever. “Trouble not yourself about that.”
And Barter, the unreasoning instrument of Fate, was not to know that
the apprehending of a couple of traitorous Jack Presbyters was of small
account to Colonel Penruddock by comparison with the satisfaction of the
blood-feud between himself and the House of Lisle.
Meanwhile the fugitives were being entertained at Moyle's Court, and
whilst they sat at supper in a room above-stairs, Dunne being still of
the party, my lady came in person to see that they had all that they
required, and stayed a little while in talk with them. There was some
mention of Monmouth and the battle of Sedgemoor, which was natural, that
being the topic of the hour.
My lady asked no questions at the time regarding Hicks's long, lean
companion. But it occurred to her later that perhaps she should know
more about him. Early next morning, therefore, she sent for Hicks as he
was in the act of sitting down to breakfast, and by her direct questions
elicited from him that this companion was that Richard Nelthorp outlawed
for his share in the Rye House Plot. Not only was the information
alarming, but it gave her a sense that she had not been dealt with
fairly, as indeed she told him.
“You will see, sir,” she concluded, “that you cannot bide here. So long
as I thought it was on the score of Nonconformity alone that you were
suffering persecution, I was willing to take some risk in hiding you.
But since your friend is what he is, the risk is greater than I should
be asked to face, for my own sake and for that of my daughters. Nor
can I say that I have ever held plottings and civil war in anything but
abhorrence--as much in the old days as now. I am a loyal woman, and as
a loyal woman I must bid you take your friend hence as soon as your fast
is broken.”
The corpulent and swarthy Hicks stood dejectedly before her. He might
have pleaded, but at that moment there came a loud knocking at the gates
below, and instantly Carpenter flung into the room with a white, scared
face and whirling gestures.
“Soldiers, my lady!” he panted in affright. “We have been betrayed. The
presence of Mr. Hicks here is known. What shall we do? What shall we
do?”
She stood quite still, her countenance entirely unchanged, unless it
were to smile a little upon Carpenter's terror. The mercy of her nature
rose dominant now.
“Why, we must hide these poor fellows as best we can,” said she; and
Hicks flung down upon one knee to kiss her hand with protestations that
he would sooner be hanged than bring trouble upon her house.
But she insisted, calm and self-contained; and Carpenter carried Hicks
away to bestow him, together with Dunne, in a hole in the malt-house
under a heap of sacking. Nelthorp had already vanished completely on his
own initiative.
Meanwhile, the insistent knocking at the gate continued. Came shouted
demands to open in the name of the King, until from a window my lady's
daughters looked out to challenge those who knocked.
Colonel Penruddock, who had come in person with the soldiers to raid the
house of his hereditary foe, stood forth to answer, very stiff and brave
in his scarlet coat and black plumed hat.
“You have rebels in the house,” he announced, “and I require you in the
King's name to deliver them up to me.”
And then, before they could answer him, came Carpenter to unbar the
door, and admit them to the court. Penruddock, standing squarely before
the steward, admonished him very sternly.
“Friend,” said he, “you had best be ingenuous with me and discover
who are in your lady's house, for it is within my knowledge that some
strangers came hither last night.”
The stricken Carpenter stood white-faced and trembling.
“Sir--sir--” he faltered.
But the colonel was impatient.
“Come, come, my friend. Since I know they are here, there's an end on't.
Show me where they are hid if you would save your own neck from the
halter.”
It was enough for Carpenter. The pair in the malthouse might have
eluded all search but for the steward's pusillanimity. Incontinently, he
betrayed the hiding-place.
“But, sir, of your charity do not tell my mistress that I have told you.
Pray, sir--”
Penruddock brushed him aside as if he had been a pestering fly, and with
his men went in, and straight to the spot where Hicks and Dunne were
lurking. When he had taken them, he swung round on Carpenter, who had
followed.
“These be but two,” he said, “and to my knowledge three rogues came
hither last night. No shufling with me, rascal. Where have you bestowed
the other?”
“I swear, as Heaven's my witness, I do not know where he is,” protested
the afflicted steward, truly enough.
Penruddock turned to his men.
“Make search,” he bade them; and search was made in the ruthless manner
of such searches.
The brutal soldiers passed from room to room beating the wainscoting
with pike and musket-butts, splintering and smashing heedlessly. Presses
were burst open and their contents scattered; chests were broken into
and emptied, the searchers appropriating such objects as took their
fancy, with true military cynicism. A mirror was shattered, and some
boards of the floor were torn up because a sergeant conceived that the
blows of his halbert rang hollow.
When the tumult was at its height, came her ladyship at last into the
room, where Colonel Penruddock stood watching the operations of his men.
She stood in the doorway leaning upon her ebony cane, her faded eyes
considering the gaunt soldier with reproachful question.
“Sir,” she asked him with gentle irony, masking her agitation, “has my
house been given over to pillage?”
He bowed, doffing his plumed hat with an almost excessive courtesy.
“To search, madame,” he corrected her. And added: “In the King's name.”
“The King,” she answered, “may give you authority to search my house,
but not to plunder it. Your men are robbing and destroying.”
He shrugged. It was the way of soldiers. Fine manners, he suggested,
were not to be expected of their kind. And he harangued her upon the
wrong she had done in harbouring rebels and giving entertainment to the
King's enemies.
“That is not true,” said she. “I know of no King's enemies.”
He smiled darkly upon her from his great height. She was so frail a body
and so old that surely it was not worth a man's while to sacrifice
her on the altar of revenge. But not so thought Colonel Penruddock.
Therefore he smiled.
“Two of them, a snivelling Jack Presbyter named Hicks and a rascal named
Dunne, are taken already. Pray, madame, be so free and ingenuous with me
aye, and so kind to yourself--as if there be any other person concealed
in your house--and I am sure there is somebody else--to deliver him up,
and you shall come to no further trouble.”
She looked up at him, and returned him smile for smile.
“I know nothing,” she said, “of what you tell me, or of what you ask.”
His countenance hardened.
“Then, mistress, the search must go on.”
But a shout from the adjoining room announced that it was at an end.
Nelthorp had been discovered and dragged from the chimney into which he
had crept.
Almost exactly a month later--on August 27th the Lady Alice Lisle was
brought to the bar of the court-house at Winchester upon a charge of
high treason.
The indictment ran that secretly, wickedly, and traitorously she did
entertain, conceal, comfort, uphold, and maintain John Hicks, knowing
him to be a false traitor, against the duty of her allegiance and
against the peace of “our sovereign lord the King that now is.”
Demurely dressed in grey, the little white-haired lady calmly faced the
Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys and the four judges of oyer and terminer who
sat with him, and confidently made her plea of “Not Guilty.”
It was inconceivable that Christian men should deal harshly with her for
a technical offence amounting to an act of Christian charity. And the
judge, sitting there in his robe of scarlet reversed with ermine, looked
a gentle, kindly man; his handsome, oval, youthful face--Jeffreys was in
his thirty-sixth year--set in the heavy black periwig, was so pale that
the mouth made a vivid line of scarlet; and the eyes that now surveyed
her were large and liquid and compassionate, as it seemed to her.
She was not to know that the pallor which gave him so interesting an
air, and the dark stains which lent his eyes that gentle wistfulness,
were the advertisements at once of the debauch that had kept him from
his bed until after two o'clock that morning and of the inexorable
disease that slowly gnawed away his life and enraged him out of all
humanity.
And the confidence his gentle countenance inspired was confirmed by
the first words he had occasion to address to her. She had interrupted
counsel to the Crown when, in his opening address to the jury--composed
of some of the most considerable gentlemen of Hampshire--he seemed to
imply that she had been in sympathy with Monmouth's cause. She was, of
course, without counsel, and must look herself to her defence.
“My lord,” she cried, “I abhorred that rebellion as much as any woman in
the world!”
Jeffreys leaned forward with a restraining gesture.
“Look you, Mrs. Lisle,” he admonished her sweetly, “because we must
observe the common and usual methods of trial in your case I must
interrupt you now.” And upon that he promised that she should be fully
heard in her own defence at the proper time, and that himself he would
instruct her in the forms of law to her advantage. He reassured her
by reverent allusions to the great Judge of Heaven and Earth, in whose
sight they stood, that she should have justice. “And as to what you say
concerning yourself,” he concluded, “I pray God with all my heart you
may be innocent.”
He was benign and reassuring. But she had the first taste of his true
quality in the examination of Dunne--a most unwilling witness.
Reluctantly, under the pressure put upon him, did Dunne yield up the
tale of how he had conducted the two absconders to my lady's house with
her consent, and it was sought to prove that she was aware of their
connection with the rebellion. The stubbornly evasive Dunne was asked at
last:
“Do you believe that she knew Mr. Hicks before?”
He returned the answer that already he had returned to many questions of
the sort.
“I cannot tell truly.”
Jeffreys stirred in his scarlet robes, and his wistful eyes grew
terrible as they bent from under beetling brows upon the witness.
“Why,” he asked, “dost thou think that she would entertain any one she
had no knowledge of merely upon thy message? Mr. Dunne, Mr. Dunne! Have
a care. It may be more is known to me of this matter than you think
for.”
“My lord, I speak nothing but the truth!” bleated the terrified Dunne.
“I only bid you have a care,” Jeffreys smiled; and his smile was more
terrible than his frown. “Truth never wants a subterfuge; it always
loves to appear naked; it needs no enamel nor any covering. But lying
and snivelling and canting and Hicksing always appear in masquerade.
Come, go on with your evidence.”
But Dunne was reluctant to go on, and out of his reluctance he lied
foolishly, and pretended that both Hicks and Nelthorp were unknown to
him. When pressed to say why he should have served two men whom he had
never seen before, he answered:
“All the reason that induced me to it was that they said they were men
in debt, and desired to be concealed for a while.”
Then the thunder was heard in Jeffreys' voice.
“Dost thou believe that any one here believes thee? Prithee, what trade
art thou?”
“My lord,” stammered the unfortunate, “I--I am a baker by trade.”
“And wilt thou bake thy bread at such easy rates? Upon my word, then,
thou art very kind. Prithee, tell me. I believe thou dost use to bake on
Sundays, dost thou not?”
“No, my lord, I do not!” cried Dunne indignantly.
“Alackaday! Art precise in that,” sneered the judge. “But thou canst
travel on Sundays to lead rogues into lurking-holes.”
Later, when to implicate the prisoner, it was sought to draw from Dunne
a full account of the reception she had given his companions, his terror
under the bullying to which he was subjected made him contradict himself
more flagrantly than ever. Jeffreys addressed the jury.
“You see, gentlemen, what a precious fellow this is; a very pretty tool
to be employed upon such an errand; a knave that nobody would trust for
half a crown. A Turk has more title to an eternity of bliss than these
pretenders to Christianity.”
And as there was no more to be got from Dunne just then, he was
presently dismissed, and Barter's damning evidence was taken.
Thereafter the wretched Dunne was recalled, to be bullied by Jeffreys in
blasphemous terms that may not be printed here.
Barter had told the Court how my lady had come into the kitchen with
Dunne, and how, when he had afterwards questioned Dunne as to why they
had whispered and laughed together, Dunne told him she had asked “If
he knew aught of the business.” Jeffreys sought now to wring from Dunne
what was this business to which he had so mysteriously alluded--this
with the object of establishing Lady Lisle's knowledge of Hicks's
treason.
Dunne resisted more stubbornly than ever. Jeffreys, exasperated--since
without the admission it would be difficult to convict her
ladyship--invited the jury to take notice of the strange, horrible
carriage of the fellow, and heaped abuse upon the snivelling, canting
sect of which he was a member. Finally, he reminded Dunne of his oath to
tell the truth, and addressed him with a sort of loving ferocity.
“What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own
soul?” bellowed that terrible judge, his eyes aflame. “Is not this the
voice of Scripture itself? And wilt thou hazard so dear and precious a
thing as thy soul for a lie? Thou wretch! All the mountains and hills of
the world heaped upon one another will not cover thee from the vengeance
of the Great God for this transgression of false-witness bearing.”
“I cannot tell what to say, my lord,” gasped Dunne.
In his rage to see all efforts vain, the judge's language became that
of the cockpit. Recovering at last, he tried gentleness again, and very
elaborately invited Dunne, in my lady's own interest, to tell him what
was the business to which he had referred to Barter.
“She asked me whether I did not know that Hicks was a Nonconformist.”
“That cannot be all. There must be something more in it.”
“Yes, my lord,” Dunne protested, “it is all. I know nothing more.”
“Was there ever such an impudent rascal?” roared the judge. “Dolt think
that, after all the pains I have been at to get an answer, thou canst
banter me with such sham stuff as this? Hold the candle to his brazen
face, that we may see it clearly.”
Dunne stood terrified and trembling under the glance of those terrible
eyes.
“My lord,” he cried, “I am so baulked, I am cluttered out of my senses.”
Again he was put down whilst Colonel Penruddock gave his evidence of
the apprehension of the rebels. When he had told how he found Hicks and
Dunne concealed under some stuff in the malt-house, Dunne was brought
back yet again, that Jeffreys might resume his cross-examination.
“Dunne, how came you to hide yourself in the malthouse?”
“My lord,” said Dunne foolishly, “I was frighted by the noise.”
“Prithee, what needest thou be afraid of, for thou didst not know
Hicks nor Nelthorp; and my lady only asked thee whether Hicks were a
Nonconformist parson. Surely, so very innocent a soul needed no occasion
to be afraid. I doubt there was something in the case of that business
we were talking of before. If we could but get out of thee what it was.”
But Dunne continued to evade.
“My lord, I heard a great noise in the house, and did not know what it
meant. So I went and hid myself.”
“It is very strange thou shouldst hide thyself for a little noise, when
thou knewest nothing of the business.”
Again the witness, with a candle still held close to his nose,
complained that he was quite cluttered out of his senses, and did not
know what he was saying.
“But to tell the truth would not rob thee of any of thy senses, if ever
thou hadst any,” Jeffreys told him angrily. “But it would seem that
neither thou nor thy mistress, the prisoner, had any; for she knew
nothing of it either, though she had sent for them thither.”
“My lord,” cried her ladyship at that, “I hope I shall not be condemned
without being heard.”
“No, God forbid, Mrs. Lisle,” he answered; and then viciously flashed
forth a hint of the true forces of Nemesis at work against her. “That
was a sort of practice in your late husband's time--you know very well
what I mean--but God be thanked it is not so now.”
Came next the reluctant evidence of Carpenter and his wife, and after
that there was yet a fourth equally futile attempt to drag from Dunne
an admission that her ladyship was acquainted with Hicks's share in the
rebellion. But if stupid, Dunne at least was staunch, and so, with a
wealth of valedictory invective, Jeffreys dismissed him, and addressed
at last the prisoner, inviting her to speak in her own defence.
She rose to do so, fearlessly yet gently.
“My lord, what I have to say is this. I knew of nobody's coming to my
house but Mr. Hicks, and for him I was informed that he did abscond by
reason of warrants that were out against him for preaching in private
meetings; for that reason I sent to him to come by night. But I had
never heard that Nelthorp was to come with him, nor what name Nelthorp
had till after he had come to my house. I could die upon it. As for
Mr. Hicks, I did not in the least suspect that he had been in the army,
being a Presbyterian minister that used to preach and not to fight.”
“But I will tell you,” Jeffreys interrupted her, “that there is not one
of those lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterian rascals but one way or
the other had a hand in the late horrid conspiracy and rebellion.”
“My lord, I abhorred both the principles and the practices of the late
rebellion,” she protested; adding that if she had been tried in London,
my Lady Abergavenny and many other persons of quality could have
testified with what detestation she had spoken of the rebellion, and
that she had been in London until Monmouth had been beheaded.
“If I had known the time of my trial in the country,” she pursued, “I
could have had the testimony of those persons of honour for me. But,
my lord, I have been told, and so I thought it would have been, that
I should not have been tried for harbouring Mr. Hicks until he should
himself be convict as a traitor. I did abhor those that were in the plot
and conspiracy against the King. I know my duty to my King better, and
have always exercised it. I defy anybody in the world that ever knew
contrary to come and give testimony.”
His voice broke harshly upon the pause. “Have you any more to say?”
“As to what they say to my denying Nelthorp to be in the house,” she
resumed. “I was in very great consternation and fear of the soldiers,
who were very rude and violent. I beseech your lordship to make that
construction of it, and not harbour an ill opinion of me because of
those false reports that go about of me, relating to my carriage towards
the old King, that I was anyways consenting to the death of King Charles
I; for, my lord, that is as false as God is true. I was not out of my
chamber all the day in which that king was beheaded, and I believe I
shed more tears for him than any other woman then living.
“And I do repeat it, my lord, as I hope to attain salvation, I never did
know Nelthorp, nor did I know of anybody's coming but Mr. Hicks. Him I
knew to be a Nonconformist minister, and there being, as is well known,
warrants out to apprehend all Nonconformist ministers, I was willing to
give him shelter from these warrants, which I knew was no treason.”
“Have you any more to say for yourself?” he asked her.
“My lord,” she was beginning, “I came but five days before this into the
country.”
“Nay,” he broke in, “I cannot tell when you came into the country, nor I
don't care. It seems you came in time to harbour rebels.”
She protested that if she would have ventured her life for anything, it
would have been to serve the King.
“But, though I could not fight for him myself, my son did; he was
actually in arms on the King's side in this business. It was I that bred
him in loyalty and to fight for the King.”
“Well, have you done?” he asked her brutally.
“Yes, my lord,” she answered; and resumed her seat, trembling a little
from the exertion and emotion of her address.
His charge to the jury began. It was very long, and the first half of
it was taken up with windy rhetoric in which the Almighty was invoked
at every turn. It degenerated at one time into a sermon upon the text of
“render unto Caesar,” inveighing against the Presbyterian religion. And
the dull length of his lordship's periods, combined with the monotone
in which he spoke, lulled the wearied lady at the bar into slumber. She
awakened with a start when suddenly his fist crashed down and his voice
rose in fierce denunciation of the late rebellion. But she was dozing
again--so calm and so little moved was she--before he had come to apply
his denunciations to her own case, and this in spite of all her protests
that she had held the rebellion in abhorrence.
It was all calculated to prejudice the minds of the jurymen before
he came to the facts and the law of the case. And that charge of his
throughout, far from being a judicial summing-up, was a virulent address
for the prosecution, just as his bearing hitherto in examining and
cross-examining witnesses had been that of counsel for the Crown. The
statement that she had made in her own defence he utterly ignored, save
in one particular, where he saw his opportunity further to prejudice her
case.
“I am sorry,” he said, his face lengthening, “to remember something that
dropped even from the gentlewoman herself. She pretends to religion and
loyalty very much--how greatly she wept at the death of King Charles the
Martyr--and owns her great obligations to the late king and his royal
brother. And yet no sooner is one in the grave than she forgets all
gratitude and entertains those that were rebels against his royal
successor.
“I will not say,” he continued with deliberate emphasis, “what hand
her husband had in the death of that blessed martyr; she has enough to
answer for her own guilt; and I must confess that it ought not, one way
or other, to make any ingredient into this case what she was in former
times.”
But he had dragged it in, protesting that it should not influence the
case, yet coldly, calculatingly intending it to do so. She was the widow
of a regicide, reason and to spare in the views of himself and his royal
master why she should be hounded to her death upon any pretext.
Thereafter he reviewed the evidence against her, dwelt upon the
shuffling of Dunne, deduced that the reason for so much lying was to
conceal the damning truth--namely, that she knew Hicks for a rebel when
she gave him shelter, and thus became the partner of his horrible
guilt. Upon that he charged them to find their verdict “without any
consideration of persons, but considering only the truth.”
Nevertheless, although his commands were clear, some of the jury would
seem to have feared the God whom Jeffreys invoked so constantly. One
of them rose to ask him pertinently, in point of law, whether it was
treason to have harboured Hicks before the man had been convicted of
treason.
Curtly he answered them that beyond doubt it was, and upon that
assurance the jury withdrew, the Court settled down into an expectant
silence, and her ladyship dozed again in her chair.
The minutes passed. It was growing late, and Jeffreys was eager to be
done with this prejudged affair, that he might dine in peace. His voice
broke the stillness of the court, protesting his angry wonder at the
need to deliberate in so plain a case. He was threatening to adjourn
and let the jury lie by all night if they did not bring in their verdict
quickly. When, at the end of a half-hour, they returned, his fierce,
impatient glance found them ominously grave.
“My lord,” said Mr. Whistler, the foreman, “we have to beg of your
lordship some directions before we can bring our verdict. We have some
doubt upon us whether there be sufficient proof that she knew Hicks to
have been in the army.”
Well might they doubt it, for there was no proof at all. Yet he never
hesitated to answer them.
“There is as full proof as proof can be. But you are judges of the
proof. For my part, I thought there was no difficulty in it.”
“My lord,” the foreman insisted, “we are in some doubt about it.”
“I cannot help your doubts,” he said irritably. “Was there not proved
a discourse of the battle and of the battle and of the army at
supper-time?”
“But, my lord, we are not satisfied that she had notice that Hicks was
in the army.”
He glowered upon them in silence for a moment. They deserved to be
themselves indicted for their slowness to perceive where lay their duty
to their king.
“I cannot tell what would satisfy you,” he said; and sneered. “Did she
not inquire of Dunne whether Hicks had been in the army? And when he
told her he did not know, she did not say she would refuse if he had
been, but ordered him to come by night, by which it is evident she
suspected it.”
He ignored, you see, her own complete explanation of that circumstance.
“And when Hicks and Nelthorp came, did she not discourse with them about
the battle and the army?” (As if that were not at the time a common
topic of discussion.) “Come, come, gentlemen,” he said, with amazing
impudence, “it is plain proof.”
But Mr. Whistler was not yet satisfied.
“We do not remember, my lord, that it was proved that she asked any such
question.”
That put him in a passion.
“Sure,” he bellowed, “you do not remember anything that has passed. Did
not Dunne tell you there was such a discourse, and she was by? But if
there were no such proof, the circumstances and management of the thing
are as full proof as can be. I wonder what it is you doubt of!”
Mrs. Lisle had risen. There was a faint flush of excitement on her grey
old face.
“My lord, I hope--” she began, in trembling tones, to get no further.
“You must not speak now!” thundered her terrible judge; and thus struck
her silent.
The brief resistance to his formidable will was soon at an end. Within
a quarter of an hour the jury announced their verdict. They found her
guilty.
“Gentlemen,” said his lordship, “I did not think I should have occasion
to speak after your verdict, but, finding some hesitancy and doubt among
you, I cannot but say I wonder it should come about; for I think, in my
conscience, the evidence was as full and plain as it could be, and if I
had been among you, and she had been my own mother, I should have found
her guilty.”
She was brought up for sentence on the morrow, together with several
others subsequently convicted. Amid fresh invectives against the
religion she practised, he condemned her to be burned alive--which was
the proper punishment for high treason--ordering the sheriff to prepare
for her execution that same afternoon.
“But look you, Mrs. Lisle,” he added, “we that are the judges shall stay
in town an hour or two. You shall have pen, ink, and paper, and if, in
the mean time, you employ that pen, ink, and paper and that hour or two
well--you understand what I mean it may be that you shall hear further
from us in a deferring of this execution.”
What was this meaning that he assumed she understood? Jeffreys had
knowledge of Kirke's profitable traffic in the West, and it is known
that he spared no means of acquiring an estate suitable to his rank
which he did not possess by way of patrimony. Thus cynically he invited
a bribe.
It is the only inference that explains the subsequent rancour he
displayed against her, aroused by her neglect to profit by his
suggestions. The intercession of the divines of Winchester procured
her a week's reprieve, and in that week her puissant friends in London,
headed by the Earl of Abergavenny, petitioned the King on her behalf.
Even Feversham, the victor of Sedgemoor, begged her life of the
King--bribed to it, as men say, by an offer of a thousand pounds. But
the King withheld his mercy upon the plea that he had promised Lord
Jeffreys he would not reprieve her, and the utmost clemency influential
petitions could wring from James II was that she should be beheaded
instead of burned.
She suffered in the market-place of Winchester on September 2d.
Christian charity was all her sin, and for this her head was demanded
in atonement. She yielded it with a gentle fortitude and resolution. In
lieu of speech, she left with the sheriff a pathetic document wherein
she protests her innocence of all offence against the King, and forgives
her enemies specifically--the judge, who prejudiced her case, and
forgot that “the Court should be counsel for the prisoner,” and Colonel
Penruddock, “though he told me he could have taken those men before they
came to my house.”
Between those lines you may read the true reason why the Lady Alice
Lisle died. She died to slake the cruelly vindictive thirst of King
James II on the one hand, and Colonel Penruddock on the other, against
her husband who had been dead for twenty years.