Regicide's Widow

by Antony Whitaker

Rebellion, persecution and injustice in Restoration England are the themes of this colourful and passionate book about the last woman to be beheaded in England. Lady Alice Lisle was the last remaining link with the hated regicides, the men who signed Charles I's death warrant, and when she gave shelter to a clergyman who had been involved in the popular uprising known as Monmouth's Rebellion, Judge Jeffreys, the 'Hanging Judge', showed no mercy. "The Regicide's Widow" recreates a disturbing period of British history through the characters of Lady Alice Lisle and Judge Jeffreys, a period when fairness, justice and truth were cast aside in the interests of political power and conformity. It is a truly Machiavellian story of statecraft, with government and judiciary involved in a ruthless display of might. In the end this display worked against them, for while it did not lead to direct revolt, the effects were so harsh and memories so vivid that the people of the West were among the most energetic supporters of the Glorious Revolution which three years after the Bloody Assize brought James' rule to an end.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ordered this book because, as I was working on my family's history, I discovered that the lady in the title -- Lady Alice Lisle -- is a direct ancestress of mine. Knowing little about the failed Monmouth Uprising and the Bloody Assize, and wanting to learn more about this branch in the family tree, I ordered this book from a seller in the UK. It's very good in a couple of ways -- the author's style is easy to read and not stuffy like an academic book, plus it gives me a good look at historic events and the part some of my ancestors played in them.

[Jay French · Rating 3 out of 5]

So a couple of years ago I was zooming a genealogy web site, and by zooming I mean picking a random n-great grandparent and drilling backwards through public trees to find new-to-me ancestors, and I happened across Lady Alice Lisle, last person to be beheaded in Britain, and according to the website, my 10th great grandmother. Also interesting was the last name Lisle, as that is the name of the town I live in. i found this book about Lady Lisle's life and mostly about her court case. Her husband was a judge who crossed a king and was murdered by his agents after fleeing to Switzerland. Lady Lisle stayed behind, but let an opponent of the king stay the night in her manor. The case is in great detail, although the author states that much of that detail seems to have appeared decades after the events, so no telling how true it is. Quite interesting. Did Lady Lisle get railroaded? Seems likely.

A coda to this review, in looking at a different genealogy website, I was surprised to see major dissent on the relationship with Lady Lisle. It seems more likely that my ancestor worked for Lisle, and was not her daughter. While it would have paid to have done this research first, I'm glad i read this book, as I had no knowledge of the times in Britain, and found this interesting background with a number of stories I'd like to follow up on.

[Heidi Quinn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book because I wanted to know more about Alice Lisle's trial but the book was disappointing from the start, mainly because it could have used a good edit. It's obvious that the author, Antony Whitaker, is a smart guy who has a theory he's trying to prove, but the writing falls short of meeting the obligations a writer owes to his readers. First of all, Whitaker forgot to tie all the pieces together with introductions and transitions, so the writing leaps from one idea to the next without context; I often felt like I was led into a forest and left there to fend for myself. Second, if Whitaker was writing a sentence that got complicated midstream, too bad for you... he just jammed the rest of the ideas in as best as he could leaving you to parse them out and put meaning to to his words; that annoyed me. And, finally, he over-used pronouns so that you're often unsure of which person or event being discussed is the "he" or the "this" that Whitaker is talking about. In fact, his use of pronouns is so confusing that a few times I had to google the details of the facts so I could understand what the author was trying to say. I recommend that, instead of reading this book, you research Alice Lisle on the internet... all her trial information is available for free online as are some clear explanations of the events that led to her arrest and execution.