Persons and pictures from the histories of France and England from the Norman conquest to the fall of the Stuarts |
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The Lady Alice Lisle;
1685 |
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 | Persons and pictures from the histories of France and England |  |
The Lady Alice Lisle;
1685
It was late on a dark summer's night, the day following the
disastrous field of Sedgemoor, on which the forces of the king,
under the incapable voluptuary Feversham, had annihilated the
rebel army of Monmouth, owing scarcely less to the incapacity
and want of judgment of the leader himself, than to the cowardice
of his general of the horse, Lord Gray, of Werk. The
scene lay amid the wooded hills of Hampshire, or that skirt
of the country which is nearest to the confines of Wiltshire.
The weather was wild and stormy, though in the height of
summer; the wind blowing very freshly in heavy gusts from
the southwest, with occasional squalls of sharp, driving rain.
The skies were very dim and gloomy, although the moon was
nearly at the full, so densely were they overlaid with masses of
thick grey clouds, drifting onward, still onward, layer above
layer, before the driving storm, so as to blot the stars entirely
from the visible firmament, and only at times to suffer a faint
lack-lustre gleam of the waning moon to struggle through the
rifts of the changeful vapors. Dark, however, and inauspicious
as the night would have been pronounced by ordinary wayfarers,
it was yet hailed, for the causes which would have rendered
it obnoxious to others, by two pedestrians, who, seemingly
almost overdone with fatigue, travel-stained, and splashed from
to plod sturdily though slowly onward, through the half-forest
scene, amid which ran the narrow and unfrequented country
road by which they were travelling.
One of these men, though he carried ostensibly no arms, nor
wore any of the regular trappings or insignia of the soldier, had
yet something in his port, carriage, and demeanor, which at
once indicated, to an experienced eye, that his proper profession
was that of arms. His broad-leafed hat was ornamented
with a band and feather, and though he was on foot he
wore high horseman's boots, from which, either in his haste or
forgetfulness, he had neglected to remove a pair of heavy
spurs.
The other person was older, less athletic in his build, and was
evidently far more wearied than his stouter companion, and it
was with pain and difficulty that he struggled feebly through
the deep mire and broken ruts of the ill-made country road.
He was dressed in black, with the band of a non-conformist
clergyman about his neck, and the close fitting black skull-cap,
which had procured for his sect the contemptuous name of
crop-ear, under his steeple-crowned hat.
“It is no use,” he said at length, after stumbling two or three
times so badly that he had all but fallen; “I can go no further.
Though my life depended on it, I could not another mile.”
“Your life does depend on it,” replied the other, shortly;
“of a surety the avenger of blood is close at our heels, and
the broad-swords of the Blues are just as thirsty for the blood
of a preacher of the word, whom they call a trumpeter of sedition,
as for that of a man-at-arms. Up! up! friend, and onward!
give me your arm, and let me lead you; nay, if it
must needs be, I will carry you. For the house of the woman
of Israel, whom men call the Lady Alice, cannot but be within
until this tyranny be over-past.”
The preacher, who had sat down utterly exhausted on a
bank by the wayside, replied only with a groan to this friendly
exhortation, but he arose to make another effort for his life, and
with the assistance of the stalwart arm of his younger and
hardier companion, toiled onward by a steepish ascent which
lay before them, stumbling at every step, and declaring his inability
to proceed even for the sake of life.
As they arrived, however, at the summit of the hill, a glimmering
light met their eyes, seen faintly and at intervals
through the foliage of the thick woodlands, which filled the
slopes and bottom of a small lap of land into which they were
descending, watered by a rapid and tumultuous brook, swollen
by the recent rains, whose murmurs came up to their ears hoarse
and menacing.
“Heaven be praised!” exclaimed the soldier, as he saw the
friendly gleam, “we are saved! That light burns in the lattice
of the lady, the pious relict of the God-fearing patriot,
John Lisle. The sounds of the brook make me sure of it.
Courage, my friend, a few more steps, and our toils and perils
shall be over.”
“God send it be so,” said the preacher. “But think you
she shall give us shelter when she knows who we are, and
from what deed we come?”
“Ay! do I,” replied the other, confidently. “There is that
in the heart of Alice Lisle that would not suffer her to yield
up even her most deadly enemy to the sword of the pursuer.
She is all woman charity, and saintly tenderness and mercy.
Besides, for her there is little danger; she is known through
the land for her loyalty, and for her deeds of love to the
cavaliers in the days of their tribulation. No one, by her
lives of the king's party than the Lady Alice. No one shed
more tears, or more openly, over the death of King Charles,
when to shed tears in itself for such a cause was perilous.
Nay! had John Lisle listened to her counsels, or yielded to
her entreaties, he never had borne the name of regicide, or
perished in a foreign land by the knives of assassins for his
zeal in the cause. No officer of the enemy would ever think
of searching in her premises for rebels, and were she even
convicted of harboring them, the country with one voice,
Tory as much as Whig, would cry aloud in her behalf.
Come on, we are saved, I tell you. But it needs not to tell
her whence we come. She knows you for a nonconformist,
and may well believe that you are pursued for preaching
without license.”
As he said these words they had come to the banks of the
flooded stream, which, ordinarily a mere thread of water, was
crossed by a ford scarce ancle-deep in usual weather. Now
it was a wild roaring torrent, at least waist deep, and bridgeless.
Still there was no alternative; it must be crossed or
they must die on the hither bank so soon as the cavalry,
which were scouring the country on every side in merciless
pursuit, should come up with them.
The soldier breasted it the first, and bravely; for though
the current was so strong as almost to take him off his legs,
he persisted, forced his way to the further side, which he
reached unharmed, and then, after pausing a moment to
recover his breath, returned to assist his weaker and more
timid companion across the dangerous ford. It required
some persuasion to induce the divine, who was far more daring
in resistance to the authority of men, and defiance of the
perils of the law, than in endurance of fatigue and suffering,
deep and dangerous flood; nor, indeed, was it strange that
a person of weak nerves and inconsiderable bodily force
should prefer the incurring of a distant and uncertain danger,
to rushing into what would seem immediate death.
The energies of the military man were however victorious
over the fears and hesitations of the preacher, but it was not
without some gentle violence that he compelled his friend to
trust to his own courage and power, which he asserted were
fully equal to the preservation of both from a greater danger
than any threatened by the sullen eddies of the swollen brook.
His actions indeed made good his assertions, but it was not
without a severe struggle, and the exertion of every nerve to
the very utmost, that he succeeded in dragging out his helpless
and half-drowned companion on the further shore; for,
offering no resistance to the stream, and opposing only an
inert body to its force, he stumbled in the hard channel and
was swept down the stream, dragging his more robust auxiliary
helplessly along with him for some yards. It is doubtful,
indeed, whether either of the two could have escaped,
for the soldier showed no disposition to extricate himself at
the sacrifice of the other, had not the branches of a large
willow tree, growing in the fence through an opening of
which the stream passed into the adjoining fields, swept the
surface of the waters, and fallen by chance into the extended
hand of the stronger of the fugitives. By aid of this, he
soon reached the dry ground, and dragged out the groaning
and exhausted preacher, whom, finding that he was now
really unable to proceed, he hoisted on his shoulders, and,
weary as he was himself, bore for nearly half a mile to the
gate, which gave access through a low brick wall to the
demesnes of the Lady Alice Lisle.
It was a small, old-fashioned red-brick hall, with the window
casings and the angles faced with white stone; a small court-yard,
with smoothly shaved turf and a few formal evergreens,
lay upon it; and behind, half screened by a belt of plantation,
were seen indistinctly the out-houses attached to the dwelling
of a rural proprietor in those days, stables, and granaries,
and pigeon-house, and barns, and malt-house, while the baying
of several large dogs from the farm-yards showed that
the stock was not left unprotected.
The light which the fugitives had seen from a distance
still burned calmly at the window of a small parlor to the
right of the door, and as they drew nearer to the house, they
could distinguish the figure of the lady bending over a large
volume, which they at once recognised as the bible.
“It is a good omen,” said the faint-hearted priest. “One so
employed shall scarce refuse Christian charity and succor.”
“I tell you that she would not do it, were she assured that
she should lose her own life thereby.”
“Verily, a sainted woman,” snuffled the preacher; “and
worthy to be held a mother of Israel.”
“She is worthy to be held a right noble English lady,”
answered Nelthorpe, abruptly, as if he were half disgusted
either by the cowardice or the cant of his companion, whom
he addressed, now that they were for the moment in a place
of safety, as master, though with far less warmth of manner
than he had done while they were both in actual danger.
At the first summons, the door of the hall was opened by
a very old grey-headed serving man, whom Nelthorpe instantly
addressed by name, as an old acquaintance, bidding
him tell the lady that he and pious and learned Master Hicks
were at her door belated and weary wanderers, and fugitives
for conscience sake, with men of Belial at their heels, praying
morning, when they would go on their way refreshed and
thankful.
The old servitor shook his head doubtfully, and seemed
reluctant to be the bearer of such a message to his mistress,
who he, perhaps, foresaw with the preciseness of aged affection,
might be endangered in consequence. But the Lady
Alice had heard something of what was passing without, and
while the old man was hesitating, opened the parlor door
and made her appearance in the hall, inquiring what was
the matter, and who were the visitors at so late an hour.
She was a very aged woman, with the still abundant tresses
of her snow-white hair braided plainly across her brows, beneath
her stiffly-starched muslin cap. Her face, however, still
retained traces of uncommon former beauty, and the benevolence,
tranquillity, and serene mildness which beamed from
every lineament, rendered her face still singularly pleasant and
attractive. Her figure, which was tall and slender, was still
full of grace, and her every movement was made with that
easy elegance which is perhaps the most distinctive proof of a
high and gentle education, and which we never fail to attribute
to the consciousness of good birth and breeding, and to
the influence of a mind at ease with itself and at peace with
others.
Her voice was low and gentle, and though she spoke half
reproachfully to the old servant for his churlishness and want
of charity in hesitating to admit men in such weary plight
and peril, the softness of her tones and the quietude of her
manner made her words seem anything rather than a censure.
A change of raiment was speedily supplied to the fugitives,
with one of whom, Nelthorpe, she was personally, though
only, and that, perhaps, not too favorably, as a very zealous,
somewhat intolerant, and confessedly rather turbulent dissenting
minister.
The Lady Alice was herself a sincere loyalist, and a devout
and devoted member of the church of England, though it had
been her lot in early life to be mated with an independent and
a regicide, whose errors, whose crimes, and whose untimely
death had steeped her life in sorrow, and blanched her dark
hair immaturely, though it had failed to cloud the calm and
religious serenity of her composed and gentle spirit. Still,
neither in the political nor the religious creed of the Lady Alice,
was there one touch of intolerance; and so full was her heart
of that truly feminine chivalry, of that almost maternal sense
of hospitable duty which ever prompts woman to defend and
protect the helpless, that it is probable that, as Nelthorpe said,
had her worst enemies, nay, the very assassins of her husband,
stood in her threshold claiming protection from the avenger of
the blood, hard on the traces, she would have granted it, womanly
pity conquering human resentment, and the sense of duty
prevailing over all fear of consequences.
Thus, though she did not greatly admire or respect the
character of her nocturnal visitants, and perhaps half-suspected
the reasons of their desperate position, she never thought for
one moment of denying them asylum against their pursuers.
Perhaps she did not reflect on the consequences to herself; perhaps
she believed that her character, her well-known loyalty
and admitted service to the cause of the cavaliers, when that
cause was at the lowest, would protect her, should her deed of
mercy be discovered: but had she been fully aware of all that
was to follow, certain it is that in no respect would her conduct
have been altered.
So soon as they were drily and comfortably clad, meat and
wine were set before them, and when they were thoroughly
warmed and recruited, as they still persisted in declaring themselves
in mortal peril of pursuit, although when they would
have entered into particular details, the lady resolutely refused
to listen; when the time for retiring had arrived, they were
conducted to such hiding places as the old house afforded—
Hicks to a secret chamber within the thickness of the wall,
having its entrance from the back of a fire-place in one of the
upper rooms, and Nelthorpe to an inner arched recess of the
malt-house, the mouth of which was in part concealed by a
pile of grain heaped against it; and here, with good store of
mattresses and bedding, they were left to enjoy the delight of
sound and secure slumbers, after four and twenty hours of uninterrupted
toil and terror.
So soundly did they sleep, and till so late an hour, that the
sun was near the meridian, and neither of them had yet made
his appearance, the lady respecting their fatigue, and forbidding
that they should be aroused; when suddenly sounds were
heard, which made them start in terror from their couches.
The long blast of a cavalry trumpet was succeeded by the trampling
of a troop of horse, and a loud and simultaneous knocking
at all the doors of the house, which was surrounded by a force
of dismounted troopers with carbines in their hands, their
officers demanding admittance in the king's name, which, as
it could not be resisted, was immediately, if not cordially
accorded.
The garments of the fugitives, which were still drying by the
kitchen fire, were instantly discovered and identified as those
of Nelthorpe and Hicks, both of whom, as the lady now learned,
positively, for the first time, had borne arms against the
king at Sedgemoor, and being proclaimed traitors, she was
harboring and secreting them. A vigorous search followed,
and as the general character of such hiding places, in the old
halls and manor houses of that day, had become almost universally
known during the late civil wars, in the course of
which many of the cavaliers had found protection in them
from their puritan pursuers, it was not long before Hicks and
Nelthorpe were both discovered and made prisoners, and the
Lady Alice herself was commanded to hold herself as attached
for high treason, and to prepare for immediate removal to the
county town, where an extraordinary circuit was about to be
held for the effectual suppression of the rebellion, and the
extirpation of the rebels. It was only as an especial favor that
the aged lady was permitted the use of her own carriage to
convey her to the prison, in which she was immured like a
common felon, to wait the arrival of the infamous Jefferies,
who was already appointed to hold the circuit, known afterwards
as the Bloody Assizes, by the cold-blooded and barbarous
tyrant, the worst man and most atrocious king who ever sat
upon the throne of England.
It may well be said that her fate was decided before she
was brought to trial, for, although it was proved beyond question
that the venerable lady—who pleaded her own cause, unaided
by counsel, confronting the insolent and shameful abuse and
ravings of Jefferies with meek and calm self-confidence—was
not even aware that the battle of Sedgemoor had been fought
on any grounds beyond mere popular rumor; much less that
either of the prisoners had borne arms in that affair; though
she had sent her own son to support the royal cause, and fight
against the very rebels she was now accused of harboring;
though it had not been proved in any court that the men she
now arraigned for sheltering were actually traitors; though
back with roars and bellowings of almost frantical abuse by
the monster Jefferies, who called them knaves and villains, browbeat
the witness with foul-mouthed vituperation, and claimed
the conviction of the prisoner, on the ground that her husband
had officiated as one of the regicide judges—a fact not proved
in court, and irrelevant, had it been proved—until at length
driven to their wits' ends, half crazed, and wholly terrified by
the furious and appalling menaces of the chief justice, they at
length brought in a verdict of guilty, though coupled with the
strongest recommendation to monster sentenced her at once to be
burned alive on the following day, and it was only by the
strong remonstrances of all the clergy, and especially of the
bishop of Salisbury, a most loyal prelate, who had lent his own
carriage horses to draw the royal artillery to Sedgemoor, that
he was compelled to renounce his determination of putting her
—an aged and most venerable woman, of the most blameless
life, and now convicted only for one of those acts of womanish
mercy, for which, in the darkest of the middle ages, and in the
first strife of the bloodiest civil wars, no woman had ever been
capitally punished—to a death the most horrible, without
allowing an appeal to the mercy, if not to the justice of the
king.
The appeal was made—intercession, entreaties of the strongest,
solicitations of the most urgent, were offered, but the savage
and cowardly bigot was, as ever, merciless—the only mercy he
would grant was the commutation of her punishment from the
stake and fagots to the block and axe—for he had promised
Jefferies, he said, that he would not pardon.
So, in the clearness of her innocence, conscious of her justification
on high, she bowed her grey head dauntlessly to the
and martyr, on the very same day on which Elizabeth Garnet,
an ancient matron of the anabaptist persuasion, was actually
burned to death, almost under the eyes of the ruthless James,
for a like offence, at Smithfield. They were the first women,
it is believed, that ever suffered in England for any similar
offence—they are the last who have been capitally punished
therein for any political crime, and the last they will be for ever.
Their fame grows brighter and their memories dearer, every
day, while that of the murderer becomes blacker hourly, as
fresh investigations bring forth fresh proofs of his utter infamy.
It is something to know that he was punished, even in this
world, as few men ever have been punished—that he was
deserted, at his utmost need, by his own children, and that he
died the most abject of things—not of men—a pauper king,
subsisting on the charity of his own country's foes.
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