• ALICE LISLE BEHEADED IN WINCHESTER, 1685
The last woman to be beheaded by the British state was Alice Lisle, on the orders of King James II, and found guilty in a show trial by his Lord Chief Justice, Judge George Jeffreys. She was 71 years old; a plaque in Winchester commemorates where she met her barbaric end.
Jeffreys (biography from 1898 is online here) was notorious, having presided over imprisonments and executions of enemies of the state, such as Algernon Sidney, William Russell and Thomas Armstrong (all executed in 1683, for their reputed involvement in the Rye House plot) and Richard Baxter. To go after an old woman was a new horror.
Killed because of her kindness. Her alleged crime was to provide accommodation in her home of Moyles Court to John Hickes and Richard Nelthorpe, two of those who had been supporters of the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion of summer 1685; she claimed to have had no knowledge of such involvement, she'd never met Nelthorpe before, and Hickes hadn't yet been put on trial so his involvement was only an allegation. Some histories say that Jeffreys pressured the jury into finding Alice guilty only after they had twice, or maybe three times, found her innocent.
But King James II wanted blood, and Alice Lisle's was to be the shocking, barbaric, first in his series of 'Bloody Assizes' in the south west of England in Autumn 1685. Alice was originally sentenced to burning at the stake, but this was (mercifully?) reduced to a mere public beheading.
(The painting below of Alice being arrested in her home, painted by Edward Matthew Ward in 1857, hangs in the House of Commons in London). Alice Lisle was posthumously pardoned by King William III and Queen Mary II upon their accession to the crown in 1689.
• KINGS CAN BE TYRANTS
Monarchy is not an end in itself, because kings can be tyrants. So said the publishers of the 1560 Geneva Bible, refugees from England. They wrote this advice into the Bible's marginal notes - some say over 400 times. The Bible was used by English non-conformists - and those who sailed on the Mayflower, seeking religious freedom in the New World, had it with them. Kings can be tyrants.
So when Charles II reclaimed the throne in 1661, and through his authoritarian Clarendon Code laws ejected over 2000 non-conformist ministers from the churches in which they preached, doubtless many of them recalled that the Geneva translators had prepared them for such times as this. Kings can be tyrants.
• REV JOHN HICKES
One of them was Rev John Hickes (1633-1685) a former Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. He had qualified as a clergyman and took a post at Stoke Damerall near Plymouth, but he was one of those that Charles II 'ejected'. So he then crossed the River Tamar into Cornwall and became one of six ministers to serve the non-conformist community at Saltash - in 1665 they were all reported as being 'notoriously disaffected to ye government of ye Church established in ye Kingdom of England' (online here).
The church buildings are still there today. Ramping things up, in 1671 Hickes authored a pamphlet entitled A sad narrative of the oppression of many honest people in Devon, &c. He was also involved in illegal outdoor church services, known as conventicles, at nearby Kingsbridge. In 1672 he personally petitioned King Charles II on behalf of the nonconformist population of the 'West Country'.
Following his arrest at Alice Lisle's home, Hickes was sentenced at Wells on 23 September 1685, and hanged, drawn and quartered with five others at Glastonbury on 6 October 1685. A plaque there reads:
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On this site stood the medieval White Hart Inn
Somerset 1685
The Pitchfork Rebellion
On Monday June 22nd 1685 James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, having previously landed at Lyme Regis, marched in wet weather from Bridgewater to Glastonbury with his rebel army. They lodged in the two parish churches and camped in the Abbey ruins before continuing to Shepton Mallet the next day.
On Friday July 3rd 1685 Lord Feversham leading the royal troops passed through Glastonbury from Shepton Mallet to camp at Somerton in pursuit of the rebels, then back in Bridgewater.
On Tuesday July 17th, the day after the battle of Sedgemoor, the Wiltshire militia leaving for home marched to Glastonbury where 6 unnamed rebels were hanged from the sign of the White Hart.
The following rebels were later hanged in the town:
Israel Bryant of Glastonbury, Yeoman
John Hicks, Minister of Religion
William Meare of Bridgewater
Richard Pearce
James Pyes of Colyton, Carpenter
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• Many of John Hickes' surviving letters and his last speech were compiled after his execution, and published by his son-in-law John Tutchin. A selection of them can be found in various later books, such as J.G. Muddiman's The Bloody Assizes, published in 1929 (from page 104 onwards, online here).
• Portrait below from The British Museum and also the New York Public Library.
• Alice Lisle article on the National Archives website here.
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