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 fine old house, after having been for a long 

 time utterly neglected, has, I am glad to say, been put in 

 repair, and is now cared for by its owner as such a 

 monument of the past deserves to be. 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 

 Kartell, 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 another monument has been raised to her in our 

 Houses of Parliament. In the Commons' corridor she stands, 

 bent with age, resting on her staff; whilst opposite is another 

 Englishwoman 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 Gentleman's Magazine 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 down, much resembles its present condition. Alice 

 Lisle is there stated to have been the daughter and co-heiress of Sir White 

 Beconsawe, knt. of Moyles Court. 



K 



