第45章 THE NIGHT OF CHARITY(7)
"There is as full proof as proof can be. But you are judges of the proof. For my part, I thought there was no difficulty in it.""My lord," the foreman insisted, "we are in some doubt about it.""I cannot help your doubts," he said irritably. "Was there not proved a discourse of the battle and of the battle and of the army at supper-time?""But, my lord, we are not satisfied that she had notice that Hicks was in the army."He glowered upon them in silence for a moment. They deserved to be themselves indicted for their slowness to perceive where lay their duty to their king.
"I cannot tell what would satisfy you," he said; and sneered. "Did she not inquire of Dunne whether Hicks had been in the army? And when he told her he did not know, she did not say she would refuse if he had been, but ordered him to come by night, by which it is evident she suspected it."He ignored, you see, her own complete explanation of that circumstance.
"And when Hicks and Nelthorp came, did she not discourse with them about the battle and the army?" (As if that were not at the time a common topic of discussion.) "Come, come, gentlemen," he said, with amazing impudence, "it is plain proof."But Mr. Whistler was not yet satisfied.
"We do not remember, my lord, that it was proved that she asked any such question."That put him in a passion.
"Sure," he bellowed, "you do not remember anything that has passed.
Did not Dunne tell you there was such a discourse, and she was by?
But if there were no such proof, the circumstances and management of the thing are as full proof as can be. I wonder what it is you doubt of!"Mrs. Lisle had risen. There was a faint flush of excitement on her grey old face.
"My lord, I hope - " she began, in trembling tones, to get no further.
"You must not speak now!" thundered her terrible judge; and thus struck her silent.
The brief resistance to his formidable will was soon at an end.
Within a quarter of an hour the jury announced their verdict. They found her guilty.
"Gentlemen," said his lordship, "I did not think I should have occasion to speak after your verdict, but, finding some hesitancy and doubt among you, I cannot but say I wonder it should come about;for I think, in my conscience, the evidence was as full and plain as it could be, and if I had been among you, and she had been my own mother, I should have found her guilty."She was brought up for sentence on the morrow, together with several others subsequently convicted. Amid fresh invectives against the religion she practised, he condemned her to be burned alive - which was the proper punishment for high treason - ordering the sheriff to prepare for her execution that same afternoon.
"But look you, Mrs. Lisle," he added, "we that are the judges shall stay in town an hour or two. You shall have pen, ink, and paper, and if, in the mean time, you employ that pen, ink, and paper and that hour or two well - you understand what I mean it may be that you shall hear further from us in a deferring of this execution."What was this meaning that he assumed she understood? Jeffreys had knowledge of Kirke's profitable traffic in the West, and it is known that he spared no means of acquiring an estate suitable to his rank which he did not possess by way of patrimony. Thus cynically he invited a bribe.
It is the only inference that explains the subsequent rancour he displayed against her, aroused by her neglect to profit by his suggestions. The intercession of the divines of Winchester procured her a week's reprieve, and in that week her puissant friends in London, headed by the Earl of Abergavenny, petitioned the King on her behalf. Even Feversham, the victor of Sedgemoor, begged her life of the King - bribed to it, as men say, by an offer of a thousand pounds. But the King withheld his mercy upon the plea that he had promised Lord Jeffreys he would not reprieve her, and the utmost clemency influential petitions could wring from James II was that she should be beheaded instead of burned.
She suffered in the market-place of Winchester on September 2d.
Christian charity was all her sin, and for this her head was demanded in atonement. She yielded it with a gentle fortitude and resolution. In lieu of speech, she left with the sheriff a pathetic document wherein she protests her innocence of all offence against the King, and forgives her enemies specifically - the judge, who prejudiced her case, and forgot that "the Court should be counsel for the prisoner," and Colonel Penruddock, "though he told me he could have taken those men before they came to my house."Between those lines you may read the true reason why the Lady Alice Lisle died. She died to slake the cruelly vindictive thirst of King James II on the one hand, and Colonel Penruddock on the other, against her husband who had been dead for twenty years.