Alice Lisle. 121 



Forest, looking out upon the woods of Newlyns and Chartley. 

 Here lived Alice Lisle, and here are shown the hiding-places 

 where, after the battle of Sedgemoor, she concealed Hicks and 

 Nelthorpe. The house is sadly out of repair ; the oak floors, 

 and part of the fine old staircase, and the wainscoting of many 

 of the rooms have been taken away ; the old tapestry is destroyed 

 and the iron gates rusted and broken. Still the private chapel 

 remains, with its panelling and carved string-course of heads, 

 and its "Ecce Homo" over the place where the altar once stood,* 



The story of Alice Lisle needs not to be told. She was 

 found guilty of high treason not by the jury, but by the judge, 

 — the infamous Jeffreys, — and was condemned, for an act of 

 Christian kindness, to worse than a felon's death. 



In Ellingham churchyard, close to the south porch, stands 

 a plain brick tomb under which she, and her daughter Anne 

 Hartell, lie, with the simple words, " Alicia Lisle dyed the 

 second of September, 1685 ;" and round the tomb, weaving its 

 ever green chaplet, grows the little rue-leaved spleenwort. 



But a nobler monument has been raised to her in our Houses 

 of Parliament. Li the Commons' corridor she stands, bent 

 with age, resting on her staff, with a gentle placidness shining 

 in her face, unmoved by any fears for the future, but caring 

 only to do what her heart feels to be right ; whilst on the 

 opposite wall, painted by the same hand, lives another of those 

 Englishwomen of whom we may be proud, — Jane Lane, who, 

 in her loyalty, would as willingly have sacrificed herself for one 

 of the most ungrateful of princes, as Alice Lisle for the poor 

 Puritans. 



* In the Gentlemuu's Mugazine for 1828, vol. 98, part, ii., p. 17, is a 

 sketch of the house, taken fifty years ago, which, with the exception of 

 some parts now pulled clown, nuich resembles its present condition. 



R 121 



