nounced, "shall return to Castile and give tidings to
Philip, his master, that Antonio Perez leaves for England and the Court
of Elizabeth, to aid her, by his knowledge of the affairs of Spain, in
her measures against the Catholic King, and to continue his holy work,
which is to make the name of Philip II stink in the nostrils of all
honest men. One of you I will spare for that purpose. You shall draw
lots for it in the morning. The other two must hang."

IV. THE NIGHT OF CHARITY--The Case Of The Lady Alice Lisle

Of all the cases tried in the course of that terrible circuit, justly
known as the Bloody Assizes, the only one that survives at all in the
popular memory is the case of the Lady Alice Lisle. Her advanced age,
the fact that she was the first woman known in English history to have
suffered death for no worse an offence than that of having exercised the
feminine prerogative of mercy, and the further fact that, even so, this
offence--technical as it was--was never fully proved against her, are
all circumstances which have left their indelible stamp of horror upon
the public mind. There is also the further circumstance that hers was
the first case tried in the West by that terrible Chief Justice, Baron
Jeffreys of Wem.

But the feature that renders her case peculiarly interesting to the
historical psychologist--and it is a feature that is in danger of being
overlooked--is that she cannot really be said to have suffered for the
technical offence for which she took her trial. That was the pretext
rather than the cause. In reality she was the innocent victim of a
relentless, undiscerning Nemesis.

The battle of Sedgemoor had been fought and lost by the Protestant
champion, James, Duke of Monmouth. In the West, which had answered the
Duke's summons to revolt, there was established now a horrible reign of
terror reflecting the bigoted, pitiless, vindictive nature of the King.
Faversham had left Colonel Percy Kirke in command at Bridgwater, a
ruthless ruffian, who at one time had commanded the Tangier garrison,
and whose men were full worthy of their commander. Kirke's Lambs they
were called, in an irony provoked by the emblem of the Paschal Lamb on
the flag of this, the First Tangier Regiment, originally levied to wage
war upon the infidel.

From Bridgwater Colonel Kirke made a horrible punitive progress to
Taunton, where he put up at the White Hart Inn. Now, there was a very
solid signpost standing upon a