with her tenants in the neighborhood.
The messenger who came from Winchester to arrest her took
her on horseback behind him, according to the custom of the
time. The horse cast a shoe. The messenger was for pressing
on without regard to the suffering of the animal. She insisted
that he should stop and have the horse shod. The man roughly
refused. She said: "I have made no outcry, on my own account.
But everybody here loves me. If you do not stop, I shall
cry out. You will never get away with me alive." The fellow
was frightened and consented to stop at a smithy. When the
smith had finished his work, Lady Lisle said: "I will be back
this way in two or three days, and I will pay you." To this
the messenger said: "Yes, you will be back this way in two
or three days, but without your head."
The headless body was brought back from Winchester after the
trial. The next day, when the household were at dinner, a
man came to the outside and thrust into the dining room window
a basket, containing her head. This was said to be for "greater
indignity."
Lady Lisle had known Hicks, one of the persons whom she relieved,
before. When the court was sitting for the trial of Charles
I., she went up to London to expostulate with her husband.
She arrived at his lodgings just as he was setting out in
a procession, with some state, for Westminster Hall, where
the trial was held. As she approached to speak to him, he
did not recognize her in the soiled dress in which she had
travelled, and motioned her away rather roughly. It was said
that she was overcome by the press in the crowd and fell to
the ground. Hicks, who was a Dissenting minister, raised
her up and took her to his own lodging near by in the Strand.
She said to him that she could not recompense him there, but
if he would come to Hampshire, or to the Isle of Wight, where
she had property, she would be glad to repay him.
Saturday, October 22, 1892, with Mrs. Hoar and her sister,
Mrs. Rice, I went from Southampton to Ringwood, about twenty
miles, and thence drove to Ellingham Church, about two miles
and a half. The church is a small but very beautiful structure
of stone, with a small wooden belfry. The tomb of Lady Alice
Lisle is a heavy, flat slab of gray stone, raised about two
or three feet from the ground, bearing the following inscription:
Here lies Dame Alicia Lisle
and her daughter Ann Harfeld
who dyed the 17th of Feb. 1703-4
Alicia Lisle
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