Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. Collection: The Trial of Lady Alice Lisle

Few acts did more to turn the public against James II than the Bloody Assizes of 1685, and no trial in the Bloody Assizes outraged the public as much as the trial of Alice Lisle.  The Bloody Assizes resulted from the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth.  James II sent his most vicious judge, George Jeffreys, the then Lord Chief-Justice of the King’s Bench, to punish those in the West Country who participated in Monmouth’s rebellion at the Battle of Sedgemoor.[1]  During that assizes, 320 men in the West Country were hanged and another 841 were transported to the West Indies, many dieing before the voyage’s end and the rest suffering under harsh conditions in the West Indies, cutting short their lives.[2]  The Bloody Assizes began with the trial of Alice Lisle for treason.  According to C. G. L. Du Cann, Lisle’s trial created “more opprobrium for the Stuart rule” than any other treason trial.[3]  Jeffreys cruelty toward the respected elderly Mrs. Lisle for what many conceived as an act of kindness on her part in taking in fugitives shocked and outraged those who witnessed the proceedings and those who heard about them afterward.  During the trial, Jeffreys stepped into the place of the prosecution, bullied the only witness who had positive testimony for Mrs. Lisle, and failed to repeat Mrs. Lisle’s defense to the jury in his closing remarks.  Mrs. Lisle, denied the assistance of counsel in the courtroom, had to make her own defense before the terrifying judge.  The resulting deaths of this and the trials that followed during the Bloody Assizes horrified the West Country, and they turned upon the king who would send such a bloodthirsty man to judge them so cruelly.

Alice Lisle’s background made her a suspicious figure for those loyal to the monarchy.  Although from a respectable family, her father Sir White Beckenshaw had connections with noble families, she married John Lisle, a supporter of Cromwell.  He sat as one of the judges in the trial that resulted in the execution of Charles I, making him one of the regicides.  For his services, Cromwell made Lisle a member of his House of Lords, which is why Alice Lisle is often referred to as Lady Alice Lisle, a title not recognized by royalists.[4]  When Cromwell’s government fell, Lisle fled to Switzerland, where he was killed by a couple of Irish Catholics in revenge for the death of Charles I.[5] After the death of her husband, Alice Lisle and her daughters moved into her family’s home, Moyles Court.  At home, she established a sound reputation through her charitable acts.[6]

Her desire to help others led her to provide shelter to two rebel soldiers who had fought for Monmouth at the Battle of Sedgemoor.  Hicks, one of those two rebels, sent Dunne with a message to Mrs. Lisle, requesting shelter for himself and Nelthorpe, the other rebel.  With Mrs. Lisle’s consent, Dunne led Hicks and Nelthorpe to Mrs. Lisle’s house after dark, where all three stayed for the night.  A man named Barter heard about Mrs. Lisle harboring the men and informed Colonel Penruddock of the fact.  In the morning, Colonel Penruddock surrounded Mrs. Lisle’s home.  After Mrs. Lisle’s many denials of the presence of these men, the soldiers searched her home and found Hicks, Nelthorpe and Dunne hiding and arrested them.[7]

The trial, the first of the Bloody Assizes, was intended to serve as a warning.  Indeed, the abuse suffered by the frail, elderly women in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle on August 27, 1685, did warn the inhabitants of the West Country of Jeffreys’s cruelty.[8]  The indictment of treason was stated as follows:

Thou standest here indicted by the name of Alice Lisle . . . for that thou, as a false traitor against the most illustrious prince, James the Second . . . the fear of God in thy heart not having, nor weighing the duty of thy allegiance; but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil, the love and true, due and natural obedience, which a true and faithful subject of our said lord the king, toward him our said lord the king, should, and of right ought to hear, wholly withdrawing, and with all thy might intending the peace and common tranquility of this kingdom of England to disturb, and war and rebellion against out said lord the king, within this kingdom of England to stir up and move, and the government of our said lord the king, within this kingdom of England to subvert, and our said lord the king from the title, honour and regal name of the imperial crown of this his kingdom of England to depose, cast down, and deprive, and our said sovereign lord the king to death and final destruction to bring and put, the 28^th day of July, in the first year of the reign of our said sovereign lord James the Second by the grace of God of England . . . well knowing one John Hicks, of Kensham, in the county of Somerset, clerk, to be a false traitor, and as a false traitor traitorously to have conspired and imagined the death and destruction of our said lord the king, and war, rebellion and insurrection against our said lord the king, within this kingdom of England traitorously to have levied and raised: Thou the said Alice Lisle afterwards, to wit, the same 28^th day of July, in the first year of the reign of our said sovereign lord the king that now is, at the parish of Ellingham aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, the said John Hicks in they dwelling-house, situate at the parish aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, secretly, wickedly and traitorously didst entertain, conceal, comfort, uphold and maintain; and that thou the said Alice Lisle then and there, for the comforting, upholding and maintaining of the aforesaid John Hicks, meat and drink unto the said John Hicks then and there maliciously and traitorously didst give and deliver, and cause to be given and delivered, against the duty of thy allegiance, against the peace of our sovereign lord the king that now is, his crown and dignity, and against the form of the statute in that case made and provided.[9]

To this charge, Mrs. Lisle pleaded not guilty.[10]  She was not charged for harboring Nelthorpe, and, counter to the prevailing tradition, she was charged with sheltering Hicks before he was convicted of treason himself.  The law under which she was charged was not cited in the case until the end, when Jeffreys explained it to the jury: “That is any person be in actual rebellion against the king, and another person (who really and actually was not in rebellion) does receive, harbour, comfort and conceal him that was such, a receiver is as much a traitor, as he who indeed bore arms.”[11]

According to the law of the time, Mrs. Lisle need only have knowingly harbored someone who actually fought against the state to have been guilty of treason herself.[12]  Thomas Babington Macaulay questions this law, which turned a kind act of an elderly woman into a capital offence, in his discussion of Alice Lisle in his History of England from the Accession of James the Second.  According to Macaulay, Mrs. Lisle was acting out of charity: “The same womanly kindness, which had led her to befriend the Royalists in their time of trouble, would not suffer her to refuse a meal and a hiding place to the wretched men who now entreated her to protect them.”[13]  Macaulay finds the sheltering of a rebel who is “vanquished, hunted down, and in mortal agony” closer to a virtue than a vice meriting death.[14] Woman, Macaulay notes, “[have] been granted, by a kind of tacit prescription, the right of indulging, in the midst of havoc and vengeance, that compassion which is the most endearing of all their charms.”[15]  Many of those in her community seemed to share Macaulay’s sentiment, and were against the charges in the first place.  The treatment of Mrs. Lisle and the witness Dunne at the trial turned their disapproval into outrage.

Jeffreys’s language during the trial was such that, according to Macaulay, “no well-bred man would have used at a race or a cock-fight.”[16]  His bullying of the witness James Dunne exemplifies Jeffreys’s abuse, legal and verbal.  Dunne, the messenger who led Hicks and Nelthorpe to Mrs. Lisle’s home and was found there the next morning hiding along with the other two, was the only witness who tried to help Mrs. Lisle.  According to Dunne’s testimony, Mrs. Lisle did not know about Hicks’s involvement in the rebellion, which supported her defense that she believed him to be hiding because of his illegal preaching rather than for his participation in Monmouth’s rebellion.  During Dunne’s testimony, the prosecution asked Judge Jeffreys “to examine him a little more strictly.”[17]  Jeffreys eagerly stepped in as prosecutor. 

Judge Jeffreys not only terrified Dunne, but also completely undermined his credibility as a witness.  In telling Dunne that he was obligated to tell the truth, Jeffreys warned him that his very soul was at stake in the matter: 

[F]or that God of Heaven my justly strike thee into eternal flames, and make thee drop into the bottomless lake of fire and brimstone, if thou offer to deviate the least from the truth. . . . But I assure you, if I catch you prevaricating in any the least tittle (and perhaps I know more than you think I do; no, none of your saints can save your soul, nor shall they save your body neither) I will be sure to punish every variation from the truth that you are guilty of.[18] 

Jeffreys then proceeds to question Dunne again and again, accusing him of lying, and frequently calling him back to testify after other witnesses have given their testimony.  In one of the many times Dunne was recalled, Jeffreys called him “a strange, prevaricating, shuffling, sniveling lying rascal.”[19]  Jeffreys stepped into the prosecution’s role, at the prosecution’s request, in examining Dunne in such a way as to undermine Mrs. Lisle’s best witness.[20]

Jeffreys’s treatment of Alice Lisle, though less harsh than his examination of Dunne, deviated from his promise at the beginning of the trial to do his duty as judge to ensure she suffers no injustice.[21]  Jeffreys several times referenced Mrs. Lisle’s husband, reminding the jury of Mr. Lisle’s involvement in the execution of Charles I.  For instance, when Alice Lisle asked if she was to be “condemned without being heard,” Jeffreys responded, “[T]hat was a sort of practice in your husband’s time; you know very well what I mean: but God be thanked, it is not so now; the king’s courts of law never condemn without hearing.”[22]  Jeffreys also mentioned a supposed report that Mrs. Lisle “rejoiced at the death of King Charles I,” but adds “that any false report of that nature [should not] influence the court or jury against her . . . be the thing true or false.”[23]  But the damage of the rumor had been done at its mentioning.  Mrs. Lisle tried to counteract these slurs and build her own credibility by showing her loyalty to the king.  As for Monmouth’s rebellion, while she could not fight, her son did fight for James, and Mrs. Lisle stated, “I instructed him [my son] always in loyalty, and sent him thither; it was I that bred him up to fight for the king.”[24]  While her assertions of loyalty and well meaning might have persuaded the jury, they did not persuade Jeffreys, and so did little to aid her case.

Jeffreys’s closing remarks to the jury, while not explicitly demanding a verdict of guilty, did certainly suggest to the jury his desire for a guilty verdict:

     Gentlemen, upon your consciences be it: the preservation of the government, the life of the king, the safety and honour of our religion, and the discharge of our consciences as loyal men, good Christians, and faithful subjects, are at state; neither her age nor her sex are to move you, who have nothing else to consider but the evidence of the fact you are to try.  I charge you therefore, as you will answer it at the bar of the last judgment, where you and we must all appear, deliver your verdict according to conscience and truth.[25]

In this little speech, Jeffreys suggested her guilt in saying that “the preservation of the government,” “the life of the King,” and even “the safety and honour of our religion” were at stake.  While these remarks did not go as far as a prosecutor’s closing argument would in condemning Mrs. Lisle, they had a stronger effect on the verdict than any prosecution’s speech could.  Jeffreys, the judge, asked the jury to deliver a guilty verdict. 

            Despite the only slightly concealed message from Jeffreys to the jury to convict Mrs. Lisle, the jurors hesitated to return a guilty verdict.  By some accounts, the jury brought a verdict of not guilty, and Jeffreys sent them back three times to reconsider until the verdict was guilty.[26]    Certainly, the jury did question whether they had enough evidence to convict.  After retiring for deliberation, the jury returned to tell Jeffreys that they had “some doubt . . . whether there be sufficient proof that she knew Hicks to have been in the army.”[27]  After some small exchange, the jurors still harbored doubt:

            L[ord] C[hief] J[ustice].  I cannot tell what would satisfy you; Did she not enquire 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 him if he had been there, but ordered him to come by night, by which it is evident she suspected it; and when he and Nelthorp came, discoursed with them about the battle and the army.  Come, come, gentlemen, it is a plain proof.

            Foreman.  My lord, we do not remember it was proved that she did ask any such question when they were there.

            L[ord] C[hief] J[ustice].  Sure you do not remember anything that has passed?  Did not Dunne tell you there was such discourse, and she was by and Nelthorp’s name was named?  But if there were no such proof the circumstances and management of the thing is as full of proof as can be; I wonder what it is you doubt of?[28]

A quarter of an hour after this direction from Jeffreys, the jury returned a verdict of guilty.  After the jury at last returns a guilty verdict, Jeffreys stated his sentiment with even more freedom, commenting, “[I]f I had been among you, and she had been my own mother, I should have found her guilty.”[29]

            After the jury returned a guilty verdict, Jeffreys sentenced Mrs. Lisle to be burnt alive that same afternoon.  Jeffreys left Mrs. Lisle one chance of deferment; he would give her pen, ink and an hour or two to find support.  During those hours, the shocked clergy of Winchester Cathedral interceded on her behalf with Jeffreys, who gave her a respite until September 2.  Others approached James, requesting her sentence be altered to beheading rather than burning.  Although James hesitated, he granted this request, and Alice Lisle was beheaded in the Winchester market place on Wednesday, September 2, 1685.  Mrs. Lisle had prepared a note for this day, which she delivered to the sheriff just before her execution.[30]  In this note, she condemns the acts of Jeffreys in aiding not her defense, but the prosecution:          

I have been told, the court ought to be counsel for the prisoner, instead of which, there was evidence given from thence; which, though it was but hearsay, might possibly affect my jury.  My defense was such as might be expected from a weak woman: but such as it was, I did not hear it repeated again to the jury.  But I forgive all persons that have done me wrong, and I desire that God will do so likewise.[31]

Mrs. Lisle honed in on the precise nature of Jeffreys’s injustice in this poignant last note.  Even when the jury tried to ask Jeffreys about Mrs. Lisle’s defense, he argued against her, as we have discussed. 

            Parliament made what reparations it could some years after Mrs. Lisle’s death at the request of her two daughters, Triphena Lloyd and Bridget Usher.  Four years later, during the first year of the reign of William and Mary, Parliament passed a private Act to annul and void the attainder of Alicia Lisle.[32]  The foundation of the Act lay in Mrs. Lisle’s conviction preceding the conviction of Hicks.[33]  The Act reads as follows:

            Whereas Alicia Lisle, widow, in the month of August, in the first year of the reign of the late king James the Second, at a session of Oyer and Terminer, and gaol delivery, holden for the county of Southampton, at the city of Winchester in the said county, by a irregular and undue prosecution, was indicted for entertaining, concealing and comforting John Hicks, clerk, a false traitor, knowing him to be such, though the said Alicia Lisle, attainted or convicted of any such crime: And by a verdict injuriously extorted and procured by the menaces and violences, and other illegal practices of George lord Jefferies, baron of Wem, then Lord Chief Justice of the King’s-bench, and chief commissioner of Oyer and Terminer and gaol delivery, within the said county, was convicted, attainted, and executed for High Treason: May it therefore please your most excellent majesties, at the humble petition of Triphena Lloyd and Bridget Usher, daughters of the said Alicia Lisle, That it be declared and enacted by the authority of this present parliament: And be it enacted by the King and Queen’s most excellent majesties, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that the said conviction, judgment and attainder of the said Alicia Lisle be, and are hereby, repealed, reversed, made and declared null and void to all intents, constructions and purposes whatsoever, as if no such conviction, judgment or attainder had ever been had or made; and that no corruption of blood or other penalty or forfeiture of honours, dignities, lands, goods, or chattels, be by the said conviction or attainder incurred: any law, usage or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.[34]

 The Act specifically denounces the actions of Jeffreys in the trial as Parliament’s reason for reversing the attainder.  With this Act, Parliament vindicated Mrs. Lisle’s condemnation in her last letter of Jeffreys’s unjust and illegal acts during her trial.

The spectacle resulting from the Bloody Assizes horrified those who witnessed the fulfillment of Jeffreys's sentences. Macaulay recounts how “[a]t every spot where two roads met, on every market place, on the green of every large village which had furnished Monmouth with soldiers, ironed corpses clattering in the wind, or heads and quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the air, and made the traveller sick with horror.”[35]  The horror of the Bloody Assizes was not quickly forgotten, even in the rush of events of 1688. When Jeffreys was captured in December of 1688 and held in the Tower, he “protested that, in his utmost cruelty, he had not gone beyond his master's express orders, nay, that he had fallen short of them.”[36]  James in turn preferred shifting the blame of cruelty to his ministers rather than take a share in the responsibility.[37] Amongst the many cruelties and blunders of James's reign, the unmitigated cruelty of the Bloody Assizes did the most to bring about his eventual downfall.  George W. Keeton describes the magnitude of the Assizes in Trial for Treason: “It was as if Hell itself had been let loose, and by that appalling outburst of vengeance, exceeding by far anything that had occurred either in the Civil War, the Wars of the Roses, or any earlier conflict, James finally forfeited the respect of the people, and ensured his own doom.”[38] 

The legacy of the Bloody Assizes appears in The Declaration of Rights in 1688. This declaration begins by including the judges with those culpable for the monstrosities of justice committed under James II.  The document also finds that these ministers, including judges, subverted the law by inflicting “illegal and cruell punishments,” which would include not only the many that were hanged, drawn and quartered during the Bloody Assizes, but also the execution of Alice Lisle through an unjust trial.  This did little, however, to prevent another Alice Lisle from suffering under the treason laws.  Not until 1696 did Parliament take active measures in securing a fair trial for those charged with treason.  The Treason Trials Act, more of a by-product of the 1688 Glorious Revolution then a direct result, at last addressed the wrongs such as those committed in the trial of Alice Lisle.[39]  It did not change the treason law with which Macaulay had grievances, but it did change the procedure of treason trials.  Defendants had to have an attorney, whereas before they were allowed none, and the defendant could have access to his attorney.  The Act required that the defendant be given a copy of the indictment.  The defendant could now have a list of potential jurors, and was allowed to subpoena witnesses under oath.  The Act also imposed a statute of limitations.[40]  These rights were gradually extended to defendants under other charges, as well.  The trial of Alice Lisle helped to bring about legal as well as political reform.

Bibliography

Du Cann, C. G. L., English Treason Trials (Muller 1964).

Hastings, Patrick, Famous and Infamous Cases (William Heinemann LTD 1950).

Keeton, George W., Trial for Treason (MacDonald & Co. 1959).

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 2 The History of England from the Accession of James the Second (1848) (American reprint 1879).

Ogg, David, England in the Reigns of James II and William III (Oxford University Press 1984).

Phillipps, Samuel March, “The Trial of Lady Alicia Lisle, for High Treason,” in State Trials; or, A Collection of the Most Interesting Trials, Prior to the Revolution of 1688 165-204 (W. Walker 1826).

R  v. Lisle, 11 Howell’s State Trials 298 (Bloody Assizes 1685).

Rezneck, Samuel, The Statute of 1696: A Pioneer Measure in the Reform of Judicial Procedure in England, 2 The Journal of Modern History 5-26 (1930).

Rowse, A. L., The Regicides (Duckworth 1994).

Stephen, H. L. ed., “Alice Lisle,” in State Trials Political and Social 239-275 (Duckworth and Co. 1899).

Treason Trials Act, 1696, 7 & 8 William 3, c. 3. 7 S.R. 6.