The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

love was of no long duration. A rapid and effectual

gaol delivery was at hand. Early in September, Jeffreys,

accompanied by four other judges, set out on that circuit of

which the memory will last as long as our race and language. The

officers who commanded the troops in the districts through which

his course lay had orders to furnish him with whatever military

aid he might require. His ferocious temper needed no spur; yet a

spur was applied. The health and spirits of the Lord Keeper had

given way. He had been deeply mortified by the coldness of the

King and by the insolence of the Chief Justice, and could find

little consolation in looking back on a life, not indeed

blackened by any atrocious crime, but sullied by cowardice,

selfishness, and servility. So deeply was the unhappy man humbled

that, when he appeared for the last time in Westminster Hall. he

took with him a nosegay to hide his face, because, as he

afterwards owned, he could not bear the eyes of the bar and of

the audience. The prospect of his approaching end seems to have

inspired him with unwonted courage. He determined to discharge

his conscience, requested an audience of the King, spoke

earnestly of the dangers inseparable from violent and arbitrary

counsels, and condemned the lawless cruelties which the soldiers

had committed in Somersetshire. He soon after retired from London

to die. He breathed his last a few days after the Judges set out

for the West. It was immediately notified to Jeffreys that he

might expect the Great Seal as the reward of faithful and

vigorous service.442


At Winchester the Chief Justice first opened his commission.

Hampshire had not been the theatre of war; but many of the

vanquished rebels had, like their leader, fled thither. Two of

them, John Hickes, a Nonconformist divine, and Richard Nelthorpe,

a lawyer who had been outlawed for taking part in the Rye House

plot, had sought refuge at the house of Alice, widow of John

Lisle. John Lisle had sate in the Long Parliament and in the High

Court of Justice, had been a commissioner of the Great Seal in

the days of the Commonwealth and had been created a Lord by

Cromwell. The titles given by the Protector had not been

recognised by any government which had ruled England since the

downfall of his house; but they appear to have been often used in

conversation even by Royalists. John Lisle's widow was therefore

commonly known as the Lady Alice. She was related to many

respectable, and to some noble, families; and she was generally

esteemed even by the Tory gentlemen of her country. For it was

well known to them that she had deeply regretted some violent

acts in which her husband had borne a part, that she had shed

bitter tears for Charles the First, and that she had protected

and relieved many Cavaliers in their distress. The same womanly

kindness, which had led her to befriend the Royalists in their

time of trouble, would not suffer her to refuse a meal and a

hiding place to the wretched men who now entreated her to protect

them. She took them into her house, set meat and drink before

them, and showed them where they might take rest. The next

morning her dwelling was surrounded by soldiers. Strict search

was made. Hickes was found concealed in the malthouse, and

Nelthorpe in the chimney. If Lady Alice knew her guests to have

been concerned in the insurrection, she was undoubtedly guilty of

what in strictness was a capital crime. For the law of principal

and accessory, as respects high treason, then was, and is to this

day, in a state disgraceful to English jurisprudence. In cases of

felony, a distinction founded on justice and reason, is made

between the principal and the accessory after the fact. He who

conceals from justice one whom he knows to be a murderer is

liable to punishment, but not to the punishment of murder. He, on

the other hand, who shelters one whom he knows to be a traitor

is, according to all our jurists, guilty of high treason. It is

unnecessary to point out the absurdity and cruelty of a law which

includes under the same definition, and visits with the same

penalty, offences lying at the opposite extremes of the scale of

guilt. The feeling which makes the most loyal subject shrink from

the thought of giving up to a shameful death the rebel who,

vanquished, hunted down, and in mortal agony, begs for a morsel

of bread and a cup of water, may be a weakness; but it is surely

a weakness very nearly allied to virtue, a weakness which,

constituted as human beings are, we can hardly eradicate from the

mind without eradicating many noble and benevolent sentiments. A

wise and good ruler may not think it right to sanction this

weakness; but he will generally connive at it, or punish it very

tenderly. In no case will he treat it as a crime of the blackest

dye. Whether Flora Macdonald was justified in concealing the

attainted heir of the Stuarts, whether a brave soldier of our own

time was justified in assisting the escape of Lavalette, are

questions on which casuists may differ: but to class such actions

with the crimes of Guy Faux and Fieschi is an outrage to humanity

and common sense. Such, however, is the classification of our

law. It is evident that nothing but a lenient administration

could make such a state of the law endurable. And it is just to

say that, during many generations, no English government, save

one, has treated with rigour persons guilty merely of harbouring

defeated and flying insurgents. To women especially has been

granted, by a kind of tacit prescription, the right of indulging

in the midst of havoc and vengeance, that compassion which is the

most endearing of all their charms. Since the beginning of the

great civil war, numerous rebels, some of them far more important

than Hickes or Nelthorpe, have been protected from the severity

of victorious governments by female adroitness and generosity.

But no English ruler who has been thus baffled, the savage and

implacable James alone excepted, has had the barbarity even to

think of putting a lady to a cruel and shameful death for so

venial and amiable a transgression.


Odious as the law was, it was strained for the purpose of

destroying Alice Lisle. She could not, according to the doctrine

laid down by the highest authority, be convicted till after the

conviction of the rebels whom she had harboured.443 She was,

however, set to the bar before either Hickes or Nelthorpe had

been tried. It was no easy matter in such a case to obtain a

verdict for the crown. The witnesses prevaricated. The jury,

consisting of the principal gentlemen of Hampshire, shrank from

the thought of sending a fellow creature to the stake for conduct

which seemed deserving rather of praise than of blame. Jeffreys

was beside himself with fury. This was the first case of treason

on the circuit; and there seemed to be a strong probability that

his prey would escape him. He stormed, cursed, and swore in

language which no wellbred man would have used at a race or a

cockfight. One witness named Dunne, partly from concern for Lady

Alice, and partly from fright at the threats and maledictions of

the Chief Justice, entirely lost his head, and at last stood

silent. "Oh how hard the truth is," said Jeffreys, "to come out

of a lying Presbyterian knave." The witness, after a pause of

some minutes, stammered a few unmeaning words. "Was there ever,"

exclaimed the judge, with an oath, "was there ever such a villain

on the face of the earth? Dost thou believe that there is a God?

Dost thou believe in hell fire. Of all the witnesses that I ever

met with I never saw thy fellow." Still the poor man, scared out

of his senses, remained mute; and again Jeffreys burst forth. "I

hope, gentlemen of the jury, that you take notice of the horrible

carriage of this fellow. How can one help abhorring both these

men and their religion? A Turk is a saint to such a fellow as

this. A Pagan would be ashamed of such villany. Oh blessed Jesus!

What a generation of vipers do we live among!" "I cannot tell

what to say, my Lord," faltered Dunne. The judge again broke

forth into a volley of oaths. "Was there ever," he cried, "such

an impudent rascal? Hold the candle to him that we may see his

brazen face. You, gentlemen, that are of counsel for the crown,

see that an information for perjury be preferred against this

fellow." After the witnesses had been thus handled, the Lady

Alice was called on for her defence. She began by saying, what

may possibly have been true, that though she knew Hickes to be in

trouble when she took him in, she did not know or suspect that he

had been concerned in the rebellion. He was a divine, a man of

peace. It had, therefore, never occurred to her that he could

have borne arms against the government; and she had supposed that

he wished to conceal himself because warrants were out against

him for field preaching. The Chief Justice began to storm. "But I

will tell you. There is not one of those lying, snivelling,

canting Presbyterians but, one way or another, had a hand in the

rebellion. Presbytery has all manner of villany in it. Nothing

but Presbytery could have made Dunne such a rogue. Show me a

Presbyterian; and I'll show thee a lying knave." He summed up in

the same style, declaimed during an hour against Whigs and

Dissenters, and reminded the jury that the prisoner's husband had

borne a part in the death of Charles the First, a fact which had

not been proved by any testimony, and which, if it had been

proved, would have been utterly irrelevant to the issue. The jury

retired, and remained long in consultation. The judge grew

impatient. He could not conceive, he said, how, in so plain a

case, they should even have left the box. He sent a messenger to

tell them that, if they did not instantly return, he would

adjourn the court and lock them up all night. Thus put to the

torture, they came, but came to say that they doubted whether the

charge had been made out. Jeffreys expostulated with them

vehemently, and, after another consultation, they gave a

reluctant verdict of Guilty.


On the following morning sentence was pronounced. Jeffreys gave

directions that Alice Lisle should be burned alive that very

afternoon. This excess of barbarity moved the pity and

indignation even of the class which was most devoted to the

crown. The clergy of Winchester Cathedral remonstrated with the