Here for the moment we must leave the great prelate of Winchester and begin our perambulation of the city that received him as a youth, welcomed him as a bishop, mourned him when dead, and that still bears on the long nave of its cathedral, and on its famous college, the impress of his manly, robust, and essentially English mind.

By way of a footpath leading from the London and South-Western Railway station, the upper part of the famous High Street can be reached, although the thoroughfare now possesses but few features of interest until we arrive at the old West Gate, a reminder, if such were needed, that Winchester was a heavily fortified and strongly walled city.  On the right is Castle Hill, the site of the ancient castle wherein Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, was imprisoned and Matilda besieged, and from whose courtyard William Rufus set out on the hunting expedition to the New Forest which was attended by such fatal consequences.  All that now remains of this stronghold is the fine old hall built by Henry III.

For some time this apartment was used as the County Hall, and here Judge Jeffreys opened his Bloody Assize before proceeding to Dorchester, Exeter, and Taunton.  Alice Lisle was the widow of John Lisle, who had been Master of St. Cross Hospital, and member for Winchester in the Long Parliament.  Although the men of Hampshire had taken no part in Monmouth’s Rebellion, many of the fugitives had fled thither, and two of them, John Hickes, a Non-conformist divine, and Richard Nelthorpe, a lawyer, found refuge in the house of Alice Lisle, where they were eventually discovered.  At her trial, Alice Lisle stated briefly that, although she knew Hickes to be in trouble, she was quite ignorant of the fact that he had participated in the rebellion.  When the jury said they doubted if the charge had been made out, Jeffreys was furious, and after another long consultation they returned a verdict of “Guilty”.  The next morning the judge pronounced sentence, and ordered the prisoner to be burned alive that same afternoon.  When remonstrances had poured in from all quarters, Jeffreys consented to the execution being postponed for five days; and the sentence was eventually commuted from burning to hanging.  So the first victim of Monmouth’s ill-fated rebellion was hanged on a scaffold in the market-place of Winchester.

A striking object hanging at one end of the hall is the top of the reputed Round Table of King Arthur, painted in radiating white and green sections, with a portrait of the famous king inset, crowned and robed, and the Tudor rose in the centre, while around the circumference are the names of the knights in old black-letter characters.  Doubtful though it is that the table is the actual one that figures in the Arthurian legends, yet it is certainly of great antiquity, and has been frequently referred to by more than one writer of mediaeval days.  It has been conjectured that it may be nothing more than the wheel of fortune which Henry III commanded to be made for the castle.  In later years another palace was started here by Charles II, the only portion that was completed being now used as barracks.