State Trials, Political and Social Volume I Part 23

LISLE--My lord, if your lords.h.i.+p please----

LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE--Mistress, you have had your turn, you cannot now be heard any more after the jury is charged.

MRS. LISLE--My lord, I did not know Nelthorp, I declare it, before he was taken.

LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE--You are not indicted for Nelthorp, but we are not to enter into dialogues now, the jury must consider of it.

JURY-MAN--Pray my lord, some of us desire to know of your lords.h.i.+p in point of law, whether it be the same thing, and equally treason, in receiving him before he was convicted of treason, as if it had been after.

LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE--It is all the same, of that certainly can be no doubt; for if in case this Hicks had been wounded in the rebels' army, and had come to her house and there been entertained but had died there of his wounds, and so could never have been convicted, she had been nevertheless a traitor.[62]

Then the jury withdrew, and staying out a while the Lord Jeffreys expressed a great deal of impatience, and said that he wondered in so plain a case they would go from the bar, and would have sent for them with an intimation, that if they did not come quickly, he would adjourn, and let them lie by it all night; but about after half-an-hour's stay, the Jury returned, and the foreman addressed himself to the Court thus:

FOREMAN--My lord, we have one thing to beg of your lords.h.i.+p some directions in, before we can give our verdict in this case; We have some doubt upon us whether there be sufficient proof that she knew Hicks to have been in the army.

LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE--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.

FOREMAN--My lord, we are in some doubt of it.

LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE--I cannot help your doubts, was there not proved a discourse of the battle and of the army at supper time?

FOREMAN--But my lord, we are not satisfied that she had notice that Hicks was in the army.

LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE--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.

LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE--Sure you do not remember anything that has pa.s.sed! 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 circ.u.mstances and management of the thing is as full of proof as can be; I wonder what it is you doubt of.

MRS. LISLE--My lord, I hope----

LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE--You must not speak now.

Then the jury laid their heads together for near a quarter of an hour, and at length agreed, and being called over, delivered in this verdict by the foreman.

CLERK OF ARRAIGNS--Alice Lisle, hold up thy hand. Gentlemen of the jury, look upon the prisoner, how say ye? Is she guilty of the treason whereof she stands indicted, or not guilty.

FOREMAN--Guilty.

CLERK OF ARRAIGNS--What goods or chattels, lands or tenements had she?

FOREMAN--None that we know of.

CLERK OF ARRAIGNS--Look to her, jailor, she is found guilty of high treason; and prepare yourself to die.

Then the verdict was recorded.

LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE--Gentlemen, I did not think I should have any 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 could be, and if I had been among you, and she had been my own mother, I should have found her guilty.

Then the Court adjourned till the next morning.

The next day Lady Lisle and other prisoners were brought up to receive sentence.

Jeffreys, after lamenting the condition of 'you Mrs. Lisle, a gentlewoman of quality and of fortune, so far stricken in years, one who all your life-time have been a great pretender to, and professor of, religion, and of that religion which bears a very good name, the Protestant religion,' goes on to point out that 'there is no religion whatsoever (except that hypocritical profession of theirs which deserves not the name of religion, I mean the canting, whining Presbyterian, phanatical profession) that gives the least countenance to rebellion or faction.' He cannot but deplore 'that in this little case so many perjuries should be added to the crime of treason, such as for my part I cannot but tremble to remember.' She should repent of her own false a.s.severations and protestations

that you upon your salvation should pretend ignorance in the business, when since that time, ever since last night, there has been but too much discovered how far you were concerned: no it is not unknown who were sent for upon the Monday night, in order to have that rebellious seditious fellow to preach to them, what directions were given to come through the orchard the back and private way, what orders were given for provision and how the horses were appointed to be disposed of.

After exhortations to all the prisoners to repent, the Court awards

that you Mrs. Lisle be conveyed from hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence you are to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, where your body is to be burnt alive till you be dead. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.

The rest of the prisoners then had the usual judgment as in cases of felony.

LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE--Look you, Mrs. Lisle, when I left his majesty he was pleased to remit the time of all executions to me; that whenever I found any obstinacy or impenitence I might order the executions with what speed I should think best; therefore Mr. Sheriff, take notice you are to prepare for this execution of this gentlewoman this afternoon. But on that, I give you, the prisoner, this intimation; we that are the judges shall stay in town an hour or two; you shall have pen, ink and paper, brought you, and if in the mean time you employ that pen, ink and paper, and this hour or two well (you understand what I mean) it may be you may hear further from us, in a deferring the execution.

On the intercession of 'some divines of the church of Winchester'

execution was respited till 2nd of September; and her sentence was afterwards commuted to beheading. She was accordingly beheaded on the afternoon of the 2nd of September 1685 in the market-place of Winchester.

In 1689, on the pet.i.tion of her daughters Mrs. Lloyd and Mrs. Askew, her attainder was annulled by Act of Parliament on the ground that the verdict was 'injuriously extorted and procured by the menaces and violences and other illegal practices of George Lord Jeffreys, baron of Wem, then Lord Chief-Justice of the King's Bench.'[63]

FOOTNOTES:

[53] George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys of Wem (1648-1689), was born, of good family, near Wrexham in Denbighs.h.i.+re. He was educated at Shrewsbury, St. Paul's, Westminster, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was admitted in 1662. He first practised at the Old Bailey and the Middles.e.x Sessions, then held at Hicks's Hall. His learning in law was never extensive; but his natural abilities were very great, and, as far as one can judge from the reports, he practised cross-examination with much more real skill than most of his contemporaries. In fact, his cross-examinations from the bench, though scandalous and brutal to the last degree, seem to be the earliest instances we have of the art as now understood. He was appointed Common Serjeant in 1671, left the popular party and was made Solicitor-General to the Duke of York in 1677, and became Recorder of London in 1678. He did what he could to aid in the persecutions connected with the Popish Plot, and was made Chief-Justice of Chester in 1680. The House of Commons pet.i.tioned the King for his removal from office in the same year, for the part he had taken in opposing pet.i.tions for a Parliament; and he was reprimanded by the House and resigned his Recorders.h.i.+p the same year, but was made Chairman of the Middles.e.x Sessions soon afterwards. He was the chief promoter of the _Quo Warranto_ proceedings by which the City was deprived of its charter, and was engaged in the prosecution of Lord Russell. He was made Lord Chief-Justice in 1683. He presided at the trials of Algernon Sidney and t.i.tus Oates. He was called to the House of Lords in 1685, and tried Richard Banks in the same year. On his return from the 'b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.size'

he was made Lord Chancellor. He suggested the revival of the Court of High Commission, and presided in it at the proceedings against Magdalen College. He advised the trial of the Seven Bishops, and narrowly missed being made Chancellor of the University of Oxford. On the flight of James II. he attempted to escape disguised as a sailor, but was seized in the Red Cow in Anchor and Hope Alley. He was removed to the Tower, where he died, and was buried in the next grave to Monmouth. The well-deserved detestation with which he was regarded makes it difficult to form any just estimate of his character. Where he had no temptation to do injustice he seems to have been a very good judge; but he had no hesitation in doing gross injustice by detestable methods, for wholly discreditable reasons. He is not seen quite at his worst in Alice Lisle's trial, because she was probably guilty and Dunne was a liar; nor is he seen at his best as a cross-examiner, because he had very good material to go on. He has been unfortunate in attracting the notice of popular writers such as Burnet, Campbell, and Macaulay, who have all found him a convenient subject for picturesque abuse; and a tendency to not too ingenious paradox diminishes the value of the work of a more recent biographer written from the opposite point of view.

[54] Appointed Attorney-General in 1689, and Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas in the same year. He was a prominent Whig, and at the time of this trial had appeared for the defence in several previous State Trials, among others that of Lord Russell, vol. ii. p. 6. He afterwards appeared for the defence in the case of the Seven Bishops, and was well known as an adherent of the Prince of Orange at the Revolution. He died in 1691.

[55] See his dying speech, _State Trials_, xi. 312, in which he makes no reference to Lady Lisle.

[56] This pa.s.sage with several others proves that Jeffreys had got up the case beforehand pretty much as counsel would to-day. Cf. pp. 246, 259, 268, 273.

[57] Cf. p. 245.

[58] He was born in Denbighs.h.i.+re.

[59] Cf. p. 245.

[60] _Ante_, p. 239.

[61] Cf. _ante_, p. 245.

[62] Lady Lisle's attainder was afterwards reversed on the ground that this ruling is wrong; it does not represent the present law (see Stephen's _Digest_, art. 62), which, however, rests on a subsequent dictum of Hale's followed by Foster, due probably to his recollection of this case. Sir James Stephen suggests that as a matter of mere law Jeffreys may have been right (_Hist. Crim. Law_, vol. ii. p. 234); he also says: 'I think that this is another of the numerous instances in which there really was no definite law at all, and in which the fact that a particular course was taken by a cruel man for a bad purpose has been regarded as a proof that the course taken was illegal.'--(_Ibid._, vol. i. p. 413).

[63] Cf. with note, p. 270.