JOHN LISLE AND ALICIA BECONSAWE
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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, John Lisle contributed ‹600.
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 favor 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 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. Lisle alone of his colleagues proposed to execute the
ordinance for the better regulation of the court of chancery, which was
submitted to the keepers of the seal, and owing to his subservient to
Cromwell was continued in his office on the removal of his colleagues in
June 1655. He. Was again
confirmed in it in October 1656 by Cromwell's third parliament, to which
he was re-elected by Southampton. In
December 1657 Cromwell summoned Lisle to his newly 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.
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" 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. Lisle
was buried in the church of the city.
Alicia
Beconsawe/Beckenshaw
was born circa 1614 Of Moyles Court, Ellingham, near Ringwood, Hampshire,
England.
The registers at Ellingham are not extant at the period of her birth,
circa 1614. On 23 October
1630 she became the second wife of John Lisle, son of William Lisle and
Bridget Hungerford, at Ellingham, England
. Alicia died on 2 September 1685 at Winchester, Hants, England.
The following is taken from the “Dictionary of
National Biography”: William Lilly, the astrologer, states in his
autobiography on page 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’s than any woman then living did.
(State Trails, xi, p. 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
Lausanna 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 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, another of Monmouth’s supporters, of whom Mrs. Lisle knew
nothing. There 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, a
well-known royalist, had been sentenced to death by her husband.
On 27 August 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 chief witness, Dunne, no proof was adduced
wither 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 September 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 September 1685, 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 in juriously extorted
and procured by the menances 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 with wife of Lord James Russell, fifth son of William
Russell, first duke of Bedford. Bridget
Lisle also married twice; her first husband being Leonard Hoare, president
of Harvard University, and her second Hezekiah Usher of Boston,
Massachusetts.
Sources:
New England Historical & Genealogical Society
Norline Thomas
The Hungerford Association
Richard Hungerford Jr.
www.geocities.com/heartland/5616/farimerc.htm
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