The Historical Nights' Entertainment by Rafael Sabatini (most important books to read .txt) 📖

had spoken of the

rebellion, and that she had been in London until Monmouth had been

beheaded.

 

“If I had known the time of my trial in the country,” she pursued,

“I could have had the testimony of those persons of honour for me.

But, my lord, I have been told, and so I thought it would have been,

that I should not have been tried for harbouring Mr. Hicks until he

should himself be convict as a traitor. I did abhor those that were

in the plot and conspiracy against the King. I know my duty to my

King better, and have always exercised it. I defy anybody in the

world that ever knew contrary to come and give testimony.”

 

His voice broke harshly upon the pause. “Have you any more to say?”

 

“As to what they say to my denying Nelthorp to be in the house,” she

resumed. “I was in very great consternation and fear of the

soldiers, who were very rude and violent. I beseech your lordship

to make that construction of it, and not harbour an ill opinion of

me because of those false reports that go about of me, relating to

my carriage towards the old King, that I was anyways consenting to

the death of King Charles I; for, my lord, that is as false as God

is true. I was not out of my chamber all the day in which that king

was beheaded, and I believe I shed more tears for him than any other

woman then living.

 

“And I do repeat it, my lord, as I hope to attain salvation, I never

did know Nelthorp, nor did I know of anybody’s coming but Mr. Hicks.

Him I knew to be a Nonconformist minister, and there being, as is

well known, warrants out to apprehend all Nonconformist ministers,

I was willing to give him shelter from these warrants, which I knew

was no treason.”

 

“Have you any more to say for yourself?” he asked her.

 

“My lord,” she was beginning, “I came but five days before this into

the country.”

 

“Nay,” he broke in, “I cannot tell when you came into the country,

nor I don’t care. It seems you came in time to harbour rebels.”

 

She protested that if she would have ventured her life for anything,

it would have been to serve the King.

 

“But, though I could not fight for him myself, my son did; he was

actually in arms on the King’s side in this business. It was I that

bred him in loyalty and to fight for the King.”

 

“Well, have you done?” he asked her brutally.

 

“Yes, my lord,” she answered; and resumed her seat, trembling a

little from the exertion and emotion of her address.

 

His charge to the jury began. It was very long, and the first half

of it was taken up with windy rhetoric in which the Almighty was

invoked at every turn. It degenerated at one time into a sermon

upon the text of “render unto Caesar,” inveighing against the

Presbyterian religion. And the dull length of his lordship’s

periods, combined with the monotone in which he spoke, lulled the

wearied lady at the bar into slumber. She awakened with a start

when suddenly his fist crashed down and his voice rose in fierce

denunciation of the late rebellion. But she was dozing again - so

calm and so little moved was she - before he had come to apply his

denunciations to her own case, and this in spite of all her protests

that she had held the rebellion in abhorrence.

 

It was all calculated to prejudice the minds of the jurymen before

he came to the facts and the law of the case. And that charge of

his throughout, far from being a judicial summing-up, was a virulent

address for the prosecution, just as his bearing hitherto in

examining and cross-examining witnesses had been that of counsel

for the Crown. The statement that she had made in her own defence

he utterly ignored, save in one particular, where he saw his

opportunity further to prejudice her case.

 

“I am sorry,” he said, his face lengthening, “to remember something

that dropped even from the gentlewoman herself. She pretends to

religion and loyalty very much - how greatly she wept at the death

of King Charles the Martyr - and owns her great obligations to the

late king and his royal brother. And yet no sooner is one in the

grave than she forgets all gratitude and entertains those that were

rebels against his royal successor.

 

“I will not say,” he continued with deliberate emphasis, “what hand

her husband had in the death of that blessed martyr; she has enough

to answer for her own guilt; and I must confess that it ought not,

one way or other, to make any ingredient into this case what she was

in former times.”

 

But he had dragged it in, protesting that it should not influence

the case, yet coldly, calculatingly intending it to do so. She was

the widow of a regicide, reason and to spare in the views of himself

and his royal master why she should be hounded to her death upon any

pretext.

 

Thereafter he reviewed the evidence against her, dwelt upon the

shuffling of Dunne, deduced that the reason for so much lying was

to conceal the damning truth - namely, that she knew Hicks for a

rebel when she gave him shelter, and thus became the partner of his

horrible guilt. Upon that he charged them to find their verdict

“without any consideration of persons, but considering only the

truth.”

 

Nevertheless, although his commands were clear, some of the jury

would seem to have feared the God whom Jeffreys invoked so

constantly. One of them rose to ask him pertinently, in point of

law, whether it was treason to have harboured Hicks before the man

had been convicted of treason.

 

Curtly he answered them that beyond doubt it was, and upon that

assurance the jury withdrew, the Court settled down into an expectant

silence, and her ladyship dozed again in her chair.

 

The minutes passed. It was growing late, and Jeffreys was eager to

be done with this prejudged affair, that he might dine in peace.

His voice broke the stillness of the court, protesting his angry

wonder at the need to deliberate in so plain a case. He was

threatening to adjourn and let the jury lie by all night if they

did not bring in their verdict quickly. When, at the end of a

half-hour, they returned, his fierce, impatient glance found them

ominously grave.

 

“My lord,” said Mr. Whistler, the foreman, “we have to beg of your

lordship some directions before we can bring our verdict. We have

some doubt upon us whether there be sufficient proof that she knew

Hicks to have been in the army.”

 

Well might they doubt it, for there was no proof at all. Yet he

never hesitated to answer them.

 

“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