Sir John the Regicide - Tales from the Tree

Last week we looked at Barb's 10th great grandmother, Lady Alice Beconsawe Lisle. Of course, in order for Barb to be in the genealogical succession, there had to be a 10th great grandfather, and a 9th great grandmother, and so on. That would be Sir John Lisle "the Regicide," who married Lady Alice - who, as we saw last week, ended up at odds with the king's court - and their daughter Margaret, who later had troubles of her own.

Sir John, born on the Isle of Wight in 1609, was a lawyer and a politician, graduating from Oxford in 1626 and called to the bar in 1633. He was elected MP for Winchester, and while in Parliament he was chairman of the committee that investigated Oliver Cromwell's allegations against the Earl of Manchester in December 1644.

In 1648 after the second civil war, John Lisle voted against continuing negotiations with King Charles I. Shortly thereafter he was appointed a commissioner of the High Court of Justice for the trial of the King. During the trial he acted in an advisory position and helped to draw up the  sentence, but he was not a signatory of the King’s death warrant. Nevertheless, King Charles was tried, convicted, and executed for high treason in January 1649.

Lisle then helped frame the new constitution for the Commonwealth, and was one of five appointed to the new Council of State. He was also made a commissioner of the Great Seal. In 1653 he administered the oath of office when Cromwell became Lord Protector, and became a member of the Upper House in 1657 ("Cromwell’s House of Lords”).

So, all in all, Barb's 10 great granddad was a big wheel in jolly old England. But, as it almost always did back then, the tide turned and in 1659 the monarchy was restored and Sir John was dismissed from office. Rather fond of keeping his head on his shoulders, John left Alice and the kids to keep the home fires burning (which later proved rather prescient for Alice) and skipped town, ending up in Lausanne, Switzerland.

In August 1664, as he was leaving the acapella service at the Church of Lausanne, Sir John was shot dead by an Irish Royalist named Sir James Fitz Edmond Cotter, doing the King's business under the alias Thomas MacDonnell. Shipping the body home wasn't in the cards, so grandad was buried on the spot, in the courtyard of the Church of Lausanne.

So, looking back at Lady Alice's story from last week, it becomes evident that her harsh punishment was a result of a long-held grudge against Sir John Lisle. The moral here is that Regicide is seldom a good idea.

And what of 9th great grandmother Margaret? Born in 1643 in Temple Church, Hampshire, England,  she married the Reverend Robert Whitaker in 1662. Whittaker, a scholarly churchman from Lancashire. was, however,  a "Nonconformist" minister. In English church history, a nonconformist was a Protestant Christian who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the established Church of England. If you grew up in the churches of Christ, you understand this concept very well.

Denied a Cambridge degree because of his Nonconformity, he preached as a Presbyterian from about 1662, when he set up an Academy for Dissenting Students for those refused entry to the universities at Stucton, a village near Fordingbridge.

The local Ministerial Alliance wasn't happy that they were there, and the Fordingbridge church wardens excommunicated Whitaker in March 1679 for not attending church, and an arrest warrant followed in September - and while there is no record of its being implemented, it is clear that he and his family (wife and several children) suffered. No doubt they struggled to get by, and when Robert died in 1683, Margaret must called Mom for financial help but the record says the 70 pounds Mom promised never arrived, because Lady Alice had problems of her own. Margaret died on 27 March 1686, a year after her mother's unfortunate demise.

Monday Meanderings - 5.15.2017

I've been saving up some photos to share with you. Some I took; others I just came across and thought interesting.

The 1st, unusual as it is, reminds me of an event I witnessed.

Many years ago, I was with a group of co-workers on a small company retreat over at Bastrop State Park. This was in the era before cell phones, and one of the men had to make a phone call, so we drove back to town and stopped at a phone booth (see, it was a long time ago) outside a drive-in that was similar to todays Sonic. It had a sort of corrugated metal awning covering over the speakers that drooped from support to support.

While we were there, someone on a horse rode up to a speaker, bent over and pushed the button, and when the server answered, "May I help you," the horse gave a startled crow hop and banged the rider's head into the canopy. The guy got the horse settled down just about the time the server, having heard no response, said again, "May I help you," and the horse again bucked the guy into the awning.

The guy wised up and got off the horse to place his order with the server, and in a few minutes they brought him two hamburgers; he ate one and fed the other to the horse. I guess there were no hard feelings on his part.

While on the subject of horses, if this dog gets any bigger, the driver is going to need a horse trailer to haul him around in!

 Somehow, I think it should be obvious that this is a bus, but given Austin drivers, maybe not.

And this Facebook "Do you remember" photo got me to thinking about skating as a teenager. There were a couple of rinks at different times in my hometown. One was under a big tent close to the swimming pool in Miller Park. Sort of made me sad that roller rinks were no longer a thing - but I checked, and evidently they are still around! We have a couple of skating rinks in Austin that apparently do a good business.

And you thought you had a bad day - Tales from the Tree

Most of Barb's ancestors came from England, though there are some Dutch and French and who knows what-all tossed in there. Maybe she should do one of those DNA tests that breaks it all out - let's see, 40% English, 30% Dutch, 20% French, 10% Heinz 57. Okay, maybe not.

 I don't spend a lot of time working with the British ancestors because there's not a lot of information available unless you subscribe to specialized database resources, and even then it's often just Lord so-and-so, 1st Earl of Wishywashy and Dame so-and-so, Countess of Someplace. But occasionally you get lucky and find an interesting story.

Lady Alice (Alicia to her friends) Beconsawe was Barb's 10th great grandmother. The line is quite complete and fairly well documented and we can be fairly certain about this. She was born in 1617 in Hampshire, England, United Kingdom and at age 19 married  Lord John Lisle "the Regicide" on 23 Oct 1636 in Ellingham, Hampshire, England. It was a lovely wedding.

By the way, "a regicide" is defined as a person who kills or takes part in killing a king. That's next week's story.


Sir John and Lady Alice had a bunch of little Lords and Ladies, and the first-born, Margaret Lisle, was Barb's 9th great grandmother, and so on. Everything was fine and dandy, apart from the fact that Sir John got himself assassinated in 1664, while hiding out in Switzerland, leaving Alice and a bunch of the kids to fend for themselves. However, since she had inherited the castle, servants and land from her daddy, Alice and the kids didn't have to take in laundry to survive.

On 20 July 1685, a couple of weeks after the Battle of Sedgemoor (the final battle of the Monmouth rebellion - but you knew that, didn't you?), Lady Alice agreed to shelter John Hickes, a well-known Nonconformist minister, at Moyles Court, her residence near Ringwood, in Hampshire. Hickes, who was a member of Monmouth's defeated army, brought with him Richard Nelthorpe, another supporter of Monmouth and under sentence of "outlawry." The men spent the night at Moyles Court, and in the morning were arrested. Their hostess, who had initially denied their presence, was charged with harboring traitors.

Lady Alice's case was tried by Judge George Jeffreys at Winchester. She pleaded she had no knowledge that Hickes's offence was anything more serious than illegal preaching. Furthermore, she had known nothing of Nelthorpe. Jeffreys, however, showed no pretense of impartiality, and even though the jury returned a verdict of innocence 3 times, he refused to accept the verdicts and sentenced Alice to be burned at the stake! Jeffreys, a real sweetheart, reportedly said that he would have found her guilty "even if she had been his own mother.".

King James II refused to extend mercy to her, though he allowed beheading as befitted her social rank to be substituted for burning at the stake. Lady Alice Lisle was publicly executed by an axe in Winchester marketplace on 2 September 1685; the last woman in English history to be beheaded by judicial sentence. She died with courage and dignity: onlookers remarked that, perhaps due to her age (80 years), she seemed to leave the world without regret (some other accounts, however, suggest she was as prone to napping during the procedure as she had been during her trial).

Next week we'll talk about Sir John "the Regicide" and his daughter, grandma Margaret.

Monday Meanderings - 5.8.2017

I've mentioned before that from time to time I operate the sound system at church. Mostly, these days, I fill in on special events - weddings, baccalaureate services, etc. This past weekend I handled the sound for an orchestra program.

Central Texas Medical Orchestra is made up of volunteer performers who work in the medical field in some capacity; some are doctors, some nurses and many are administrative or staff members at medical facilities. The orchestra does 4 programs a year and each benefits some local non-profit (this time it was Central Texas Epilepsy Foundation). They always have guest performers - one is always a virtuoso of some sort - violin, cello, etc. - and the other(s) are from the current music scene. 

The guests from the current scene this weekend were Lloyd Maines and Terry Hendrix. You can Google them if you want, but the short version is that Lloyd - a long-time fixture in the Texas music scene - was inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall Of Fame as one of the first three members. The other two? Willie Nelson and Stevie Ray Vaughan! He may be best known however, as father of Natalie Maines of Dixie Chicks fame.

Terri is a prolific song-writer (co-wrote the Grammy-winning song "Lil' Jack Slade" by the Dixie Chicks) and is known for her high-energy shows. She and Lloyd have appeared with the CTMO multiple times, as has Sarah Hickman, Gina Chavez & others.

So I'm pumped, because mixing sound for these guys is sort of a high water mark for this old rock-and-roll disc jockey. It was a hoot, primarily because Lloyd and Terri are super-nice people and really, really easy to work with. And, if I do say so myself, it sounded awesome!

One funny story out of the weekend: I'm doing a sound check with Terri before the program and everything is sounding great when I hear this shrill feedback. I'm freaking out, because I spent about an hour earlier that afternoon adjusting the equalization on that channel and monitor to get a really good volume level without causing any feedback!

So I'm looking at the graphic display, frantically searching for a feedback spike at some frequency, and there's nothing! Terri is singing away, graciously ignoring the really obnoxious squealing going on, and I'm losing it!

Then I realize it's a piccolo player warming up! #IndistinguishableFromFeedback

The orchestra normally rotates the performances between larger halls (churches and St Eds) in town but they have asked to have all of next season's performances our facility because they like the sound of the room. And the awesome sound guy, I'm sure.

Here's a video recorded during rehearsal by Cynthia Sadler on her iPhone, I think.  It doesn't have my professional-sounding audio, but it captures the moment pretty well.

Monday Meanderings - 5.1.2017

I am a coffee drinker. A serious coffee drinker. None of the flavored foo-foo drinks, the double-pump soy chia tea latte, or the extra-espresso americano, or the ones they squirt hot milk in. I'll take mine plain, black - and sweet.

OK, the sweet part is a problem. I gave up sugar a hundred pounds ago. It's unquestionably bad for you. But that leaves artificial sweeteners, and besides tasting off, I worry that they can't be a healthy choice. Recent news stories seem to confirm that. Coffee, good. Sugar, bad. Sweetener, very bad.

The only option seems to be black, unsweetened coffee. So this week, I began drinking my coffee without anything in it. Predictably, I'm drinking a whole lot less coffee, so maybe it's for the best. Yeah, right.

This week was the Volunteer Appreciation gala at Learning Ally. I was recognized in two areas - first as an "Overachiever" which simply means that I have volunteered more than 100 hours in the last 12 months. I got what seems to be a dribble cup with Learning Ally printed on it for that honor, and then this, for passing the 1,500 volunteer hours mark.

While 1,500 hours seems like a lot, you have to know that we have some seriously dedicated volunteers at the Austin studio. We have several folks with 2,500, 3,500 and 5,000 hours, and one with a Life Time Achievement of 15,000 hours!

A while back we ordered a product that we saw advertised on Facebook. That was a first for us, but we had been for sometime looking for something to keep a small mat in place in front of the door to the bonus room. It's a heavy traffic area and the mat is there to keep the carpet clean(er) - but, with normal traffic the mat scoots all over the place.

The advertised product was a set of silicon "rug grippers" that were guaranteed not to harm the underlying carpet, but wouldn't let the mat slide. Sounded like what we needed, so I placed an order and charged the nominal $8 cost on PayPal.

The first clue that things were not what they seemed was in the free shipping. It was free, but we were offered premium shipping so as not to wait the 6 weeks (!) free shipping would take. Premium shipping was more than the cost of the pads, so we opted for time over money. The next clue was when PayPal added .75 cents for a "foreign transaction" fee.  Then there was the email that said the product had been shipped and it should be there in a few weeks, but they were not responsible for delays in customs!

And the final part of the story revealed the merchant was, as suspected, located in China, based on the customs declaration on the package.

As the rug grippers themselves? Worth about $8.75. Plus, it would have been helpful if there had been instructions on how to actually apply the grippers. They at least could have followed IKEA's lead with pictures of what to do.