Lee, Sidney, ed., Dictionary of National Biography, Volume XXXIII, Leighton-Lluelyn, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1893, pp. 341-342.
Lisle, John 1610?-1664, regicide, born about 1610, was second son of Sir William Lisle of Wootton, Isle of Wight, by Bridget, daughter of Sir John Hungerford of Down Ampney, Gloucestershire (Berry, County Genealogies, ‘Hampshire,' p. 174). On 25 Jan. 1625-6 he matriculated as a member of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and graduated B.A. in February 1625-6. He was called to the bar from the Middle Temple in 1633 and became a bencher of his inn in 1649 (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1500-1714, p. 917). He was chosen M.P. for Winchester in March 1639-40, and again in October 1640. He advocated violent measures on the king's removal to the north, and obtained some of the plunder arising from the sale of the crown property. To the fund opened on 9 April 1642 for the ‘speedy reducing of the rebels’ in Ireland, Lisle contributed 600l. (Rushworth, Hist. Coll. pt. iii. vol. i. p. 565). On the eviction of Dr. William Lewis (1592-1667) [q.v.] in November 1644 he was made master of St. Cross Hospital, near Winchester, and retained the office until June 1649. In 1644-5 he sat on the committee to investigate the charges preferred by Cromwell against the Earl of Manchester (Commons' Journals, iv. 25). He displayed his inveterate hostility to Charles in a speech delivered on 3 July 1645, before the lord mayor and citizens of London, with reference to the discovery of the king's letters at Naseby. It was printed. In December 1647, when the king was confined in the Isle of Wight, Lisle was selected as one of the commissioners to carry to him the four bills which were to divest him of all sovereignty. He spoke in the House of Commons on 28 Sept. 1648 in favour of rescinding the recent vote, that no one proposition in regard to the personal treaty with the king should be binding if the treaty broke off upon another; and again, some days later, urged a discontinuance of the negotiation with Charles. He took a prominent part in the king's trial. He was one of the managers, was present every day, and drew up the form of the sentence. He was appointed on 8 Feb. 1648-9 one of the commissioners of the great seal, and was placed on the council of state. Lisle became one of Cromwell's creatures. He not only concurred in December 1653 in nominating Cromwell protector, but administered the oath to him; and having been reappointed lord commissioner, was elected member in the new parliament, on 12 July 1654, both for Southampton, of which town he was recorder, and for the Isle of Wight. He selected to sit for Southampton. In June previously he had been constituted president of the high court of justice, and in August he was appointed one of the commissioners of the exchequer. established house of peers. Richard Cromwell preserved him in his place; but when the Long parliament met again in May 1659, he was compelled to retire. The house, however, named him on 28 Jan. 1660 a commissioner of the admiralty and navy (ib. vii. 825). When the Restoration was inevitable Lisle escaped to Switzerland establishing himself first at Vevay and afterwards at Lausanne, where he is said to have ‘charmed the Swiss by his devotion’ (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1663-4), and was treated with much respect and ceremony. There he was shot dead on 11 Aug. 1664, on his way to church, by an Irishman known as Thomas Macdonnell [see art. Maccartain, William]. Macdonnell escaped, and Lisle was buried in the church of the city. His first wife was a daughter of Sir Henry Hobart, chief justice of the common pleas. His second wife Alice [q.v.] is noticed separately. With other issue he had two sons, John (d. 1709), of Dibden, Hampshire, and William, who adhered to the king and married the daughter of Lady Katherine Hyde (ib. 1660-1, p. 341). [Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 665; Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss), i. 422, 437; Foss's Judges, vi. 452-5; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1644-65; Parl. Hist. vol. iii.; Howell's State Trials, iv. 1053 et seq., v. 875, 886, 908, xi. 297; Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports v. vi. vii. and viii.; Ludlow's Memoirs.] Lee, Sidney, ed., Dictionary of National Biography, Volume XXXIII, Leighton-Lluelyn, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1893, pp. 339-340. Lisle, Alice 1614?-1685, victim of a judicial murder, born about 1614, was daughter and heiress of Sir White Beckenshaw of Moyles Court, Ellingham, near Ringwood, Hampshire. The registers at Ellingham are not extant at the period of her birth, about 1614. In 1630 she became the second wife of John Lisle [q.v.]. William Lilly, the astrologer, states in his autobiography (p. 63) that Mrs. Lisle visited him in 1643 to consult him about the illness of her friend Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke. A note states that at the date of Charles I's execution she was reported to have exclaimed that ‘her heart leaped within her to see the tyrant fall;' but she herself asserted many years later that she ‘shed more tears' for Charles I ‘than any woman then living did’ (State Trials, xi. 360), and she claimed to have been at the time on intimate terms with the Countess of Monmouth, the Countess of Marlborough, and Edward Hyde, afterwards lord chancellor. She probably shared her husband's fortunes till his death at Lausanne in 1664. Subsequently she lived quietly at Moyles Court, which she inherited from her father, and she showed while there some sympathy with the dissenting ministers in their trials during Charles II's reign. Her husband had been a member of Cromwell's House of Lords, and she was therefore often spoken of as Lady or Lady Alice Lisle. At the time of Monmouth's rebellion in the first week of July 1685 she was in London, but a few days later returned to Moyles Court. On 20 July she received a message from John Hickes [q.v.], the dissenting minister, asking her to shelter him. Hickes had taken part in Monmouth's behalf at the battle of Sedgemoor (6 July) and was flying from justice. But, according to her own account, Mrs. Lisle merely knew him as a prominent dissenting minister, and imagined that a warrant was out against him for illegal preaching or for some offence committed in his ministerial capacity. She readily consented to receive him, and he arrived at ten o'clock at night, a few days later, accompanied by the messenger Dunne, and by one Richard Nelthorp [q.v.], another of Monmouth's supporters, of whom Mrs. Lisle knew nothing. Their arrival was at once disclosed by a spying villager to Colonel Penruddock, who arrived next day (26 July) with a troop of soldiers, and arrested Mrs. Lisle and her guests. Mrs. Lisle gave very confused answers to the colonel, whose father, John Penruddock [q.v.], a well-known royalist, had been sentenced to death by her husband. On 27 Aug. 1685 she was tried by special commission before Judge Jeffreys at Winchester, on the capital charge of harbouring Hickes, a traitor. No evidence respecting Hickes's offences was admitted, and in spite of the brutal browbeating by the judge of the chief witness, Dunne, no proof was adduced either that Mrs. Lisle had any ground to suspect Hickes of disloyalty or that she had displayed any sympathy with Monmouth's insurrection. She made a moderate speech in her own defence. The jury declared themselves reluctant to convict her, but Jeffreys overruled their scruples, and she was ultimately found guilty, and on the morning of the next day (28 Aug.) was sentenced to be burnt alive the same afternoon. Pressure was, however, applied to the judge, and a respite till 2 Sept. was ordered. Lady Lisle petitioned James II (31 Aug.) to grant her a further reprieve of four days, and to order the substitution of beheading for burning. The first request was refused; the latter was granted. Mrs. Lisle was accordingly beheaded in the market-place of Winchester on 2 Sept., and her body was given up to her friends for burial at Ellingham. On the scaffold she gave a paper to the sheriffs denying her guilt, and it was printed, with the ‘Last Words of Colonel Rumbold,' 1685, and in ‘The Dying Speeches ... of several Persons,' 1689. The first pamphlet was also published in Dutch. The attainder was reversed by a private act of parliament in 1689 at the request of Mrs. Lisle's two married daughters, Triphena Lloyd and Bridget Usher, on the ground that ‘the verdict was injuriously extorted and procured by the menaces and violences and other illegal practices’ of Jeffreys. The daughter Triphena Lloyd married, at a later date, a second husband named Grove, and her daughter became the wife of Lord James Russell, fifth son of William Russell, first duke of Bedford. Bridget Lisle also married twice; her first husband being Leonard Hoar [q.v.], president of Harvard University, and her second Hezekiah Usher of Boston, Massachusetts; a daughter, Bridget Hoar, married the Rev. Thomas Cotton (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. xii. 99, 3rd ser. iv. 159). [Howell's State Trials, xi. 298-382; Luttrell's Brief Relation, i. 357; Macaulay's Hist. vi. 302-4; C. Bruce's Book of Noble English-women (1875), pp. 122-46.] The Dying Speeches and Behaviour of the several State Prisoners that have been Executed the last 300 Years, London: printed for J.Brotherton and W.Meadows, 1720. The Last Speech of Madam Lisle, beheaded at Winchester, September 1685 Gentlemen, Friends and Neighbours, The crime was, my entertaining a Non-conformist Minister, who is since sworn to have been in the Duke of Monmouth's army. I am told, if I had not denied them, it would not have affected me: I have no Excuse but Surprise and Fear; which I believe my Jury must make use of to excuse their Verdict to the World. I have been told, That the Court ought to be Council for the Prisoner: Instead of Advice, there was Evidence given from thence, which (tho' it was but Hearsay) might possibly affect my Jury. My Defence was such as might be expected from a weak Woman; but such as it was, I never heard it repeated again to the Jury. But I forgive all persons that have wrong'd me; and I desire that God will do so likewise. I forgive Colonel Penruddock, altho' he told me, He could have taken those Men, before they came to my House. As to what I expected for my Conviction, that I gave it under my Hand that I discours'd with Nelthrop; that could be no Evidence to the Court or Jury, it being after my Conviction and Sentence. I acknowledge his Majesty's Favour in revoking my Sentence; and I pray God he may long reign in Peace, and that the true Religion may flourish under him. Two things I have omitted to say, which is, That I forgive him that desir'd to be taken from the Grand Jury, and put upon the Petty Jury, that he might be the more nearly concern'd in my Death; and return humble Thanks to God, and the reverend Clergy, that assisted me in my Imprisonment.
It may be expected that I should say something at my Death, my Birth and Education being near this Place; my Parents instructed me in the Fear of God; and I now die of the reformed Religion; always being instructed in that Belief that if Popery should return into this Nation, it would be a great Judgement. I die in Expectation of Pardon of my Sins, and Acceptation with the Father, by the imputed Righteousness of Jesus Christ: He being the End of the Law for Righteousness to every one that believeth. I thank God, thro' Christ Jesus, I depart under the Blood of Sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel; God having made this Chastisement an Ordinance to my Soul. I did as little expect to come to this Place on this occasion, as any person in this Nation; therefore let all learn not to be high-minded, but fear. The Lord is a Sovereign, and will take what Way he seeth best to glorify himself by his poor Creatures; I there for humbly desire to submit to his Will, praying of him, that in Patience I may possess my Soul.
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