Up a Tree

We back up in time in this post from the days of Lord Greystoke, moving to the 17th century. There we find a Sir John Lisle, also sometimes referred to as Lord John Lisle, though I could not find that he had any titles of nobility. Cromwell appointed Lisle to the House of Lords, which probably accounts for the use of the title Lisle was a prominent person in his own right, and I will return to his story in another post. Suffice to say he was part of legal proceedings that led to the execution of King Charles I of England in 1649, an involvement that would lead to his violent death. This time I want to look at his second wife, listed on my family tree as Lady Alice Beconsawe. Lady Alice also died a violent death, perhaps as much because she was married to Sir John as because of the charges laid against her.  I'm relying for the post on the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 33, published in 1893, once the standard reference for the lives of the famous and infamous in Great Brita...

I have mentioned before that my grandfather had a chauffeur's license. At the time, I assumed that would be the older equivalent of what Texas used to call a chauffeur's license, which you obtained if you planned to drive a taxi or a bus, or to be an actual chauffeur. Nowadays they issue Class B and Class C licenses, more commonly referred to as commercial driver licenses or CDLs, for those jobs, and cities control who receives a permit to work as a cab driver or chauffeur. I mistakenly assumed that much the same would be true for Illinois, even though a five minute web search probably would have disabused me of the idea. I did search for chauffer's license in the early 1900s in Illinois and came away empty handed.  I still have no clear idea what the licenses for that period were or how you obtained them, but I again assumed my grandfather probably drove a taxi. That's a lot of assuming, isn't it? I found a new document -- a "registration card" mistakenly...