had uniformly shown to royal fugitives, and asked Jeffreys whether it was as much treason to harbour Hicks before conviction as after. Jeffreys replied that it was, but neither he nor the four judges sitting on the same bench told them, which was equally true, that the traitor must be convicted before the receiver of the traitor can be brought to trial. "A provision," says Sir James Mackintosh, " so manifestly necessary to justice, that without the observance of it. Hicks might have been acquitted of treason after Mrs. Lisle had been executed for harbouring him as a traitor."
The peasant who had led the fugitives to her house, was brought as the reluctant witness against her. This poor man, thus led up to destroy so good a woman, was unwilling to speak. Jeffreys stormed, swore, and cursed him in such style, that he was totally confounded. As he stood speechless, Jeffreys roared out, " Oh, how hard it is for the truth to come out of a lying presbyterian knave!" As he could only mutter some unintelligible words, Jeffreys went on:—
"Was there ever such a villain on the face of the earth? Dost thou believe there is a God? Dost thou believe in hell fire? Of all the witnesses that I ever met with, I never saw thy fellow." The man being still more frightened, Jeffreys screeched, "I hope, gentlemen of the jury, that you take notice of the horrible carriage of this fellow. How can any 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 villainy. Oh, blessed Jesus! what a generation of vipers do we live among!"
In this style he terrified the witnesses, and then came the turn of the jury. They retired to consult, but not coming to a speedy conclusion, for they were afraid of the judge and yet loth to condemn the prisoner, Jeffreys sent them word that if they did not agree he would lock them up all night. They then came into court and expressed their doubts of Mrs. Lisle knowing that Hicks had been with Monmouth. Jeffreys told them that their doubt was altogether groundless, and sent them back to agree. Again they returned, unable to get rid of their doubt. Then Jeffreys thundered against them in his fiercest style, and declared that were he on the jury, he would have found her guilty had she been his own mother. At length the jury gave way and brought in a verdict of guilty. The next morning Jeffreys pronounced sentence upon her amid a storm of vituperation against the presbyterians, to whom he supposed Mrs. Lisle belonged. He ordered her, according to the rigour of the old law of treason, to be burned alive that very afternoon.
This monstrous sentence thoroughly roused the inhabitants of the place; and the clergy of the cathedral, the stanchest supporters of the king's beloved arbitrary power, remonstrated with Jeffreys in such a manner, that he consented to a respite of five days, in order that application might be made to the king. The clergy sent a deputation to James, earnestly interceding for the life of the aged woman, on the ground of her generous conduct on all occasions to the king's friends. Ladies of high rank, amongst them the ladies St. John and Abergavenny, pleaded tenderly for her life. Feversham, moved by a bribe of a thousand pounds, joined in the entreaty, but nothing could move that obdurate heart, and all the favour that James would grant her was, that she should be beheaded instead of burnt. Her execution, accordingly, took place at Winchester on the 2nd of September, and James II. won the unenviable notoriety of being the only tyrant in this country, however implacable, who had ever dyed his hands in woman's blood for the merciful deed of attempting to save the lives of the unfortunate. What made this case worse was, that neither Hicks nor Nelthorpe had yet been tried, so that the trial of Mrs. Lisle was altogether illegal, and the forcing of the jury completed one of the most diabolical instances of judicial murder on record.
From Winchester Jeffreys proceeded to Dorchester. He came surrounded by still more troops, and, in fact, rather like a general to take bloody vengeance, than as a judge to make a just example of the guilty, mingled with mercy, on account of the ignorance of the offenders. The ferocious tyrant was rendered more ferocious, from his temper being exasperated by the agonies of the stone which his drunken habits had inflicted on him. He had the court hung with scarlet, as if to announce his sanguinary determination. When the clergyman who preached before him, recommended mercy in his sermon, he was seen to make a horrible grimace, expressive of his savage disdain of such a sentiment. It was whilst preparing to judge the three hundred prisoners collected there, that he received the news of his elevation to the woolsack. He had received orders from James to make effectual work with the rebels, and he now adopted a mode of dispatching the unhappy wretches in a most wholesale style. As it would be a very tedious work to try all that number one by one, he devised a very expeditious plan. He sent two officers to them into the prison, offering them mercy or certain death. All who chose to make confession of their guilt should be treated with clemency, all who refused should be led to immediate execution. His clemency amounted to a respite of a day or two—he hanged them all the same. Writing to Sunderland, Jeffreys said on the 16th of September:—"This day I began with the rebels, and have dispatched ninety-eight." Of the three hundred, two hundred and ninety-two received sentence of death. Eighty only were hanged, the rest were, for the most part, sent to the plantations as slaves. Jeffreys had declared that any lawyer or parson found amongst the rebels should be hanged to a certainty, and here he had the pleasure of hanging Matthew Brag, an attorney. One of the prisoners objected to the witnesses brought against him, a prostitute and a papist. "Thou impudent rebel," exclaimed Jeffreys, "to reflect on the king's evidence. I see thee, villain—I see thee already with the halter around thy neck." Some one told hun that a prisoner was a poor creature, who was maintained by the parish. "Make yourself easy," said Jeffreys; "I will relieve the parish of him."
From Dorchester he proceeded to Exeter, where two hundred and forty-three prisoners awaited their doom. He proceeded in the same way, and condemned the whole body in a batch, and as they saved him much trouble, he did not hang so many of them. Taunton, the capital of Somersetshire, the county where the rebellion was the strongest, presented him with no fewer than a thousand prisoners. Here he perfectly revelled in his bloody task. The work seemed to have the effect of brandy or champagne upon him. He grew every day more exuberant and riotous. He was in
