Regicide's Widow by Antony WhitakerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
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.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment