Alice, Lady Lisle, commonly known as Alicia Lisle or Dame Alice Lyle, was a landed lady of the English county of Hampshire, who was executed for harbouring fugitives after the defeat of the Monmouth Rebellion at the Battle of Sedgemoor.
13 Facts About Alice Lisle
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Alice Lisle is known to history as Lady Lisle although she has no claim to the title; her husband was a member of the "Other House" created by Oliver Cromwell and "titles" deriving from that fact were often used after the Restoration.
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Alice Lisle is the last woman to have been executed by a judicial sentence of beheading in England.
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Alice Lisle had a younger sister, Elizabeth, who married Sir Thomas Tipping of Wheatfield Park in Stoke Talmage in Oxfordshire.
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Alice Lisle was an English lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1640 and 1659.
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Alice Lisle supported the Parliamentarian cause in the English Civil War and was one of the regicides of King Charles I of England.
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Lady Alice Lisle's case was tried by Judge Jeffreys at the opening of the Bloody Assizes at Winchester.
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Alice Lisle pleaded she had no knowledge that Hickes's offence was anything more serious than illegal preaching.
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Alice Lisle said she had no sympathy with the rebellion whatsoever.
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Alice Lisle showed no pretence of impartiality, becoming "an eloquent addition to the prosecution", in the words of 21st-century historian Charles Spencer.
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Alice Lisle died with courage and dignity: onlookers remarked that, perhaps due to her age, she seemed to leave the world without regret.
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Alice Lisle is buried in a tomb on the right-hand side of the porch at St Mary and All Saints Church, in Ellingham, Hampshire.
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Alice Lisle spent the night before her execution in one of the upper rooms of the inn, whence she exited via a window directly onto the scaffold erected for her beheading.