ible judge; and thus struck
her silent.

The brief resistance to his formidable will was soon at an end. Within
a quarter of an hour the jury announced their verdict. They found her
guilty.

"Gentlemen," said his lordship, "I did not think I should have occasion
to speak after your verdict, but, finding some hesitancy and doubt among
you, I cannot but say I wonder it should come about; for I think, in my
conscience, the evidence was as full and plain as it could be, and if I
had been among you, and she had been my own mother, I should have found
her guilty."

She was brought up for sentence on the morrow, together with several
others subsequently convicted. Amid fresh invectives against the
religion she practised, he condemned her to be burned alive--which was
the proper punishment for high treason--ordering the sheriff to prepare
for her execution that same afternoon.

"But look you, Mrs. Lisle," he added, "we that are the judges shall stay
in town an hour or two. You shall have pen, ink, and paper, and if, in
the mean time, you employ that pen, ink, and paper and that hour or two
well--you understand what I mean it may be that you shall hear further
from us in a deferring of this execution."

What was this meaning that he assumed she understood? Jeffreys had
knowledge of Kirke's profitable traffic in the West, and it is known
that he spared no means of acquiring an estate suitable to his rank
which he did not possess by way of patrimony. Thus cynically he invited
a bribe.

It is the only inference that explains the subsequent rancour he
displayed against her, aroused by her neglect to profit by his
suggestions. The intercession of the divines of Winchester procured
her a week's reprieve, and in that week her puissant friends in London,
headed by the Earl of Abergavenny, petitioned the King on her behalf.
Even Feversham, the victor of Sedgemoor, begged her life of the
King--bribed to it, as men say, by an offer of a thousand pounds. But
the King withheld his mercy upon the plea that he had promised Lord
Jeffreys he would not reprieve her, and the utmost clemency influential
petitions could wring from James II was that she should be beheaded
instead of burned.

She suffered in the market-place of Winchester on September 2d.
Christian charity was all her sin, and for this her head was demanded
in atonement. She yielded it with a gentle fortitude and resolution. In
lieu of speech, she left with the sheriff a pat