ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



warlike proclivities. The Monmouth rebellion obtained considerable 

 support in parts of Hampshire, the mayor of Lymington, Colonel Dore, 

 proclaiming him king and raising a troop in his service. The Bishop of 

 Winchester, though over seventy, at once took the field. At Sedgemoor 

 it was the bishop's horses that drew the cannon and the bishop's hands 

 that directed the decisive fire. Mews received at Sedgemoor a wound 

 from which he suffered during the remainder of his life. It is pleasant to 

 know that he afterwards interceded for the lives of the rebels, bearding 

 even the ruffian Jeffreys. This rebellion led to perhaps the most infamous 

 execution that has ever disgraced Winchester. Alice Lisle, of Ellingham, 

 a widow of three score and ten, the second wife of John Lisle, ' a regicide,' 

 but one of the most distinguished men in the Commonwealth service, 

 gave shelter to John Hickes, a dissenting minister who had been an active 

 supporter of Monmouth, but whom Lady Lisle believed to be escaping 

 from a warrant for illegal preaching. She was arrested for harbouring a 

 traitor, and Jeffreys, at the special commission at Winchester in August, 

 1685, surpassed himself in brutal browbeating and bullied the jury into 

 finding her guilty of this capital charge. On 28 August, Jeffreys sen- 

 tenced her to be burnt alive the same afternoon. The bishop's pressure 

 secured a respite of a few days, and an alteration in the sentence. The 

 aged lady, daughter and heiress of Sir White Beckenshaw of Moyles 

 Court, Ellingham, was beheaded in the market place on 2 September, 

 ' the victim of a judicial murder.' * 



At the revolution of 1688, Mews took the oaths to William and 

 Mary. The nonjuring movement did not take much hold of the 

 Hampshire clergy. The following were those who were then deprived : 

 William Hanbury, rector of Botley ; Edward Worsley (son of Sir 

 Edward Worsley), rector of Gatcombe ; Charles Buchannan, vicar of 

 Farnborough ; Mr. Flood, curate of Ringwood ; and Mr. Kilback. Of 

 Mr. Buchannan it is said that he was ' first a Complier, then a Recanter, 

 afterwards complied again.' 2 



Bishop Mews died in 1706, at the age of eighty-nine, and was 

 followed by Sir Jonathan Trelawney, translated from Exeter. During 

 the time that he held the see of Bristol, Trelawney was one of the 

 seven bishops who were put on their trial for resistance to the indulgence 

 of James II. But his opinions underwent strange changes. In his 

 visitation charge on first entering Winchester diocese he announced 

 that he was equally hostile both to papists and the ' furious sects of 

 dissenters." Trelawney finished the rebuilding of the palace of Wol- 

 vesey, which had been begun by his predecessor, and resided there when 

 in Hampshire. 



The most distinguished clergyman in Hampshire at this time was 

 Joseph Bingham, author of that classical work, The Antiquities of the 



i Sidney Lee, Diet, of Nat. Biog. 



Lift of Kettleuiell (1718), Appendix 6. The British Museum copy has MS. additions and altera- 

 tions. Bowies' Life of Bishop Ken, ii. 18*. 



8 This charge and a sermon were privately printed in 1877. British Museum, press mark 4473, 



P. 4. 



u 97 *3 



