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BY MRS. CAROLINE H. BUTLER.
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There is perhaps no data in the annals of English History marked with a more bloody significance of the fearful extent to which the evil passions of mankind will reach, when not held in check by religious or civil discipline, than that characterized as the “Bloody Assizes,” in the reign of James the Second—1685—which, even from out the lapse of two centuries, still stands forth in loathsome and horrible distinctness. When the savage and bloody-minded Jeffreys, empowered by a vindictive and arbitrary monarch, stalked like a demon through the land, tracing his passage with blood and tears, while the music of his infernal march, was the groans and death-shrieks of his victims. And as he strode onward—behind him he left horrible, eye-blasting, soul-harrowing proofs of his cruelty—corpses swinging in the wind at the corners of the cross-roads—gibbets stuck up in every market-place—and blackening heads and limbs impaled, even before the windows of the holy house of God!
Such was the more than brutal ferocity with which this fiend in human shape, George Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench, prosecuted his commission.
Through all those districts where the inhabitants had either taken up arms in the Monmouth Rebellion against the king, or who had been known five years before to have received the unfortunate duke with favor and homage, when assuming the rank of a rightful prince he passed with almost regal triumph through the land, did Jeffreys and his well-picked myrmidons pursue their murderous track, sparing neither sex nor age—the death-blow descending alike upon the silver head of tottering age, or lisping, helpless infancy “And,” says Macaulay, “his spirits rose higher and higher as the work went on. He laughed, shouted, joked, and swore in such a way that many thought him drunk from morning to night, but in him it was not easy to distinguish the madness produced by evil passions, from the madness produced by brandy.”
In such a frame of mind he entered Southampton and proceeded toward Winchester, which, although not the scene of any warlike encounter with rebel and royalist, had nevertheless been resorted to by many of the former as a place of safety, among whom was their unhappy leader, the infatuated Monmouth himself. It was here, near the borders of the New Forest that the unfortunate man was taken prisoner. Worn out by fatigue—crushed by disappointment—his high hopes blasted by defeat, the ill-fated son of Charles was discovered concealed in a ditch, where all through a long, long day, and a weary night, without food or drink, the unhappy fugitive had vainly hoped to evade the search of his pursuers.
Hither, then, came Jeffreys, tainting the air as with a pestilence, and causing great terror and dismay, particularly among the peasantry, no one knowing who next might prove the victim of the tyrant’s insatiate thirst for blood.
He was now, however, in hot pursuit of two men—one a Nonconformist divine, named Hicks; the other a lawyer, Richard Nelthorp, an outlaw, who had made himself obnoxious by being concerned in the Rye House plot. These men, it is needless to say, Jeffreys was resolved to pursue to the death.
In a fine old mansion, encompassed by a closely wooded park of a century’s growth, dwelt the Lady Alice Lisle. She was the widow of John Lisle, who had held a commission under Cromwell, and had also sat in the Long Parliament. He had been created a Lord by Cromwell, and the title of Lady was still courteously assigned to his widow, for she was one greatly beloved by all persons and parties, both Whig and Tory, for her many excellent qualities, and was also nearly allied to many noble families.