November 1644 he was made master of St. Cross Hospital, near Winchester, and retained the office until June 1649. In 1644–5 he sat on the committee to investigate the charges preferred by Cromwell against the Earl of Manchester (Commons' Journals, iv. 25). He displayed his inveterate hostility to Charles in a speech delivered on 3 July 1645, before the lord mayor and citizens of London, with reference to the discovery of the king's letters at Naseby. It was printed. In December 1647, when the king was confined in the Isle of Wight, Lisle was selected as one of the commissioners to carry to him the four bills which were to divest him of all sovereignty. He spoke in the House of Commons on 28 Sept. 1648 in favour of rescinding the recent vote, that no one proposition in regard to the personal treaty with the king should be binding if the treaty broke off upon another; and again, some days later, urged a discontinuance of the negotiation with Charles. He took a prominent part in the king's trial. He was one of the managers, was present every day, and drew up the form of the sentence. He was appointed on 8 Feb. 1648–9 one of the commissioners of the great seal, and was placed on the council of state.
Lisle became one of Cromwell's creatures. He not only concurred in December 1653 in nominating Cromwell protector, but administered the oath to him; and having been reappointed lord commissioner, was elected member in the new parliament, on 12 July 1654, both for Southampton, of which town he was recorder, and for the Isle of Wight. He selected to sit for Southampton. In June previously he had been constituted president of the high court of justice, and in August he was appointed one of the commissioners of the exchequer. Lisle alone of his colleagues proposed to execute the ordinance for the better regulation of the court of chancery, which was submitted to the keepers of the seal, and owing to his subserviency to Cromwell was continued in his office on the removal of his colleagues in June 1655. He was again confirmed in it in October 1656 by Cromwell's third parliament, to which he was re-elected by Southampton. In December 1657 Cromwell summoned Lisle to his newly established house of peers. Richard Cromwell preserved him in his place; but when the Long parliament met again in May 1659, he was compelled to retire. The house, however, named him on 28 Jan. 1660 a commissioner of the admiralty and navy (ib. vii. 825).
When the Restoration was inevitable Lisle escaped to Switzerland establishing himself first at Vevay and afterwards at Lausanne, where he is said to have ‘charmed the Swiss by his devotion’ (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1663–4), and was treated with much respect and ceremony. There he was shot dead on 11 Aug. 1664, on his way to church, by an Irishman known as Thomas Macdonnell. Macdonnell escaped, and Lisle was buried in the church of the city. His first wife was a daughter of Sir Henry Hobart, chief justice of the common pleas. His second wife Alice is noticed separately. With other issue he had two sons, John (d.. 1709), of Dibden, Hampshire, and William, who adhered to the king and married the daughter of Lady Katherine Hyde (ib. 1660–1, p. 341).
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 665; Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss), i. 422, 437; Foss's Judges, vi. 452–5; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1644–65; Parl. Hist. vol. iii.; Howell's State Trials, iv. 1053 et seq., v. 875, 886, 908, xi. 297; Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports v. vi. vii. and viii.; Ludlow's Memoirs.]
LISLE, SAMUEL (1683–1749), successively bishop of St. Asaph and of Norwich, the son of Richard Lisle, esq., was born at Blandford, Dorset, in 1683. He received his education first at the grammar school of his native town, and then at Salisbury, under Edward Hardwicke, ‘one of the most eminent schoolmasters of that time’ (Bouchery, Memoir). On 4 March 1699–1700, being then seventeen years of age, he matriculated at Wadham College, Oxford, where he was admitted scholar in 1701. He graduated B.A. in 1703, and M.A. in 1706. He became Goodridge exhibitioner in 1707, and the same year was elected fellow, and received holy orders both as deacon and priest. In 1710 he went as chaplain to the Levant Company to Smyrna, where he remained six years, visiting Constantinople, and making several journeys into Ionia, Caria, and other parts of Asia Minor, with the view of collecting inscriptions. In 1716 he exchanged the Smyrna chaplaincy for that of Aleppo, which he held till 1719, taking a journey into the Holy Land, and visiting Jerusalem and the adjacent country. In 1719 he came back to England by way of Italy and France. On his return he was appointed bursar of his college, and soon received much church preferment. In 1720 he was appointed chaplain to Thomas, the second baron Onslow (whose father, Richard, baron Onslow [q. v.], had been a governor of the Levant Company). In 1721 he became rector of Holwell, Bedfordshire, Tooting, Surrey, and St. Mary-le-Bow, London, to which last benefice he was presented by George I. In the same year he was appointed domestic chaplain by Archbishop Wake, himself a Blandford man, by whom in 1724 he
