Lisle, Alice (c. 1614–1685)

English sympathizer of religious dissenters. Name variations: Lady Alice Lisle; Alicia Lisle. Born Alicia Beckenshaw around 1614; executed in Winchester market-place on September 2, 1685; daughter of Sir White Beckenshaw, who was descended from an old Hampshire family; married John Lisle (1610?–1664), who had been one of the judges at the trial of Charles I and was subsequently a member of Cromwell's House of Lords—thus, his wife's courtesy title.

Lady Alice Lisle seems to have leaned toward Royalism but was sympathetic to religious dissent during a time of rebellion. The "Protestant duke," James, duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of Charles II, was leading an insurrection to claim the British throne. The rebellion ended on July 6, 1685, when his forces were decisively defeated by royal troops, led by the earl of Faversham, in the battle of Sedgemoor (the last ever fought on British soil). Two weeks later, on July 20, the 70-year-old Lisle agreed to shelter John Hickes, a well-known Nonconformist minister and fleeing member of Monmouth's army, at Moyles Court, her residence near Ringwood. Hickes brought with him Richard Nelthorpe, also a partisan of Monmouth who was under sentence for "outlawry." The two men passed the night at Moyles Court, and on the following morning were arrested. Their hostess, who had denied their presence in the house, was charged with harboring traitors.

When her case was tried by Judge George Jeffreys at the opening of the "Bloody Assizes" at Winchester, Lisle pleaded that she had no knowledge that Hickes' offense was anything more serious than illegal preaching, that she had known nothing previously of Nelthorpe (whose name had not been included in the indictment, but was, nevertheless, mentioned to strengthen the case for the Crown), and that she had no sympathy with the rebellion. The jury reluctantly found her guilty, and, since the law recognized no distinction between principals and accessories in treason, she was sentenced to be burned. Jeffreys, notorious for his brutality (some 300 people were executed in connection with the failed rebellion and another 800 sold as slaves), ordered that the sentence be carried out that same afternoon. A few days' respite was subsequently granted, however, and James II allowed beheading to be substituted for burning.

Lady Lisle was executed in Winchester marketplace on September 2, 1685, and many critics termed her death a judicial murder. One of the first acts of the Parliament of William and Mary II was to reverse the attainder (conviction of treason) on the grounds that the prosecution was irregular and the verdict injuriously extorted by "the menaces and violences and other illegal practices" of Jeffreys. It is, however, extremely doubtful whether Jeffreys, for all his cruelty, exceeded the strict letter of the existing law.