Alice Lisle. 



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 no telling. 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 Ellinghani 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 a nobler monument has been raised to her in our Houses 

 of Parliament. In 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 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 pre-ent condition. 



R 121 



