As for my body, I do desire you that it may be decently carried to my own house, and that my friends may have liberty to inter it with my ancestors, and set it in the vault of the Church where they were laid before me; And in the interim, that there may be no incivility offered to my body here, when I am dead, and that my corpse may remain quiet without molestation when it is carried away.

For the Right Honorable Edward Earl of Manchester, Speaker of the House of Peers Pro Tempore (dated August 29, 1648, the day after the shooting). My Lord: I have herewith sent you the Articles, with the Explanations annexed, upon which it hath pleased God in his best time to deliver the Town of Colchester, and the enemy therein into your hands without further bloodshed, saving that (for some satisfaction to Military Justice, and in part of avenge for the innocent blood they have caused to be spilt, and the trouble, damage, and mischief they have brought upon the Town, this Country, and the Kingdom) I have with the advice of a council of war of the chief officers both of country forces and the Army, caused two of them who were rendered at mercy to be shot to death before any of them had Quarter assured them. The persons pitched upon for the example were, Sir Charles Lucas, and Sir George Lisle, in whose military execution I hope your lordships will not find cause to think your honor or justice prejudiced.

The same day examples of Justice was done upon Sir Charles Lucas, and Sir George Lyle, the former was conceived (and too true) to be the cause of the ruin of this place, his interest in the Town drawing the Army thither. He was the head of all those that did rise in this County, and so brought the odium of the country upon him, and at last grew harsh to the townspeople, (a thing contrary to his wonted disposition) when they complained for want of bread, not regarding what misery he brought upon that place where he was born; besides, it was affirmed unto him by four persons at his death, that he put two men to the sword with his own hands in cold blood, long after quarter granted. The other, as was informed, was a great cause of burning of the houses about the town, and a person bent to much mischief.

This is the first example of Justice that ever was showed in this kind (since the first and second war) by the Parliament’s party, though it be according to the rule of war (in submitting to mercy). The example hereof was given by the King’s party in the west, when fourteen country men, that among others submitted to mercy, were all hanged up together.

About seven at night Sir Charles Lucas was brought forth, tied to a pillar, and shot to death, his color not the least changing, or any sign of fear approaching either by his words or gesture; his blessed soul being thus dismissed to his maker, Sir George Lisle was next brought forth, who after he had kissed the pale lips of his dead friend, valiant Sir Charles, and made a short but pithy prayer, offered himself to death with such willingness that the bloody damned ‘Saints’ were astonished at his courage, which surpassed any ancient Roman we read of, but a pistol put to his ear and discharged, he soon became exanimated earth. … and so those two worthy Knights were massacred for their Loyalty to their King, and love to their country, over whose graves (for I hope the devilish Saints will not deny them sepulture) give me leave to weep this Elegy.

Title page, Philocrates, The Loyal Sacrifice: Presented in the Lives and Deaths of Those Two Eminent-Heroic Patterns, for Valor, Discipline, and Fidelity, the Generally Beloved and Bemoaned, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, Knights, Being both shot to death at Colchester, five hours after the surrender (n.p., 1648), British Museum 896,1230.235, AN390243001, Trustees of the British Museum. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Sir George Lisle’s turn was next, who beholding that sad spectacle, the dead body of his dearest friend, fell upon it and kissed it, as if he meant to breath into it another soul. Not a passionate express, but bedewed with a funeral tear, with a free, true relation of his virtues and endowments, of which this ungrateful nation was not worthy. Often would he redouble these words: ‘In how short a moment has a brave spirit expired! Well, this priority was due to thee, but I shall not be long behind thee. My death which is now at hand, shall restore thee to me. This, with assured hopes I have in Him that made me, shall make my translation cheerful. My divorce from such a friend enjoins me to hasten to him.’ …

Yet observe one passage more, and you shall see with what impunity these merciless times can dispense with the inhumanest actions. Not to hold you in suspense, it was thus. The body of that noble and ever memorable Knight, Sir Charles, being to be buried with his Ancestors, a civil courtesy which he much desired before his death, and entered the vault where his predecessors had been usually interred, some of those insolent and inhumane soldiers, upon opening of the monument, wherein diverse bodies lay wrapt in lead, intending, it seems, to discover their barbarism in the highest measure, forebore not only to cut away the lead wherein those bodies were enfolded, but to pull off the very hair (O matchless impiety!) which grew upon their scalps; whereof diverse among them, made them hatbands and bracelets, which they no less contemptibly then disgracefully wore, glorying, as it seems, in their pillage of those native remains and ornaments of the dead. This they did in a despite and grounded hate to his family, after such time as they had acted their cruel tragedy. O inexemplary fury! If such brutish spirits be not timely subdued, England will lose both name and nature, and become Barbarians. If the memorials of the dead, those last houses, their urns, may not be secured from violence, what safety may civil societies presume to have?

• Dear brother, thy idea in my mind doth lie,
• And is entombed in my sad memory,
• Where every day I to thy shrine do go,
• And offer tears, which from my eyes do flow.
• My heart the fire, whose flames are ever pure,
• Laid on love’s altar last, till life endure.
• My sorrows incense strew, of sighs fetched deep;
• My thoughts do watch while thy sweet spirit sleeps.
• Dear blessed soul, though thou art gone, yet lives
• Thy fame on earth, and men thee praises give.
• But all’s too small, for thy heroic mind
• Was above all the praises of mankind.

• Alas! Who shall my funeral mourner be,
• Since none is near that is allied to me?
• Or who shall drop a sacrificing tear,
• If none but enemies my hearse shall bear?

• For here’s no mourner to lament my fall,
• But in my fate, though sad, rejoicèd all,
• And think my heavy ruin far too light,
• So cruel is their malice, spleen, and spite!

• For men no pity nor compassion know,
• But like fierce beasts in savage wildness go,
• To wash and bathe themselves in my poor blood,
• As if they health received from that red flood.

• Yet will the winds my doleful knell ring out,
• And showering rain fall on my hearse about;
• The birds, as mourners on my tomb shall sit,
• And grass, like as a covering grow on it.

• Then let no spade nor pickaxe come near me,
• But let my bones in peace rest quietly;
• He, who the dead dislodges from their grave,
• Shall neither blessedness nor honor have.