Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History)

Using a wide range of legal, administrative and literary sources, this study explores the role of the royal pardon in the exercise and experience of authority in Tudor England. It examines such abstract intangibles as power, legitimacy, and the state by looking at concrete life-and-death decisions of the Tudor monarchs. Drawing upon the historiographies of law and society, political culture and state formation, mercy is used as a lens through which to examine the nature and limits of participation in the early modern polity. Contemporaries deemed mercy as both a prerogative and duty of the ruler. Public expectations of mercy imposed restraints on the sovereign's exercise of power. Yet the discretionary uses of punishment and mercy worked in tandem to mediate social relations of power in ways that most often favoured the growth of the state. Cover......Page 1 Half-title......Page 3 Series-title......Page 4 Title......Page 5 Copyright......Page 6 CONTENTS......Page 7 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......Page 9 ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS......Page 11 1 Introduction: mercy and the state......Page 13 2 Changing approaches to punishment and mitigation......Page 35 PUNISHMENT AND THE LAW......Page 37 TRADITIONAL SOURCES OF MITIGATION......Page 57 3 Changing approaches to the pardon......Page 68 GENERAL PARDONS......Page 69 SPECIAL PARDONS......Page 85 4 Patronage, petitions, and the motives for mercy......Page 103 PETITIONS......Page 123 PROCESSES AND PATRONAGE......Page 131 5 Public performances of pardon......Page 148 6 Protest and pardons......Page 175 7 Conclusion......Page 212 Appendix I: Sources......Page 221 Appendix II: Benefit of the belly......Page 224 Manuscript sources......Page 227 Printed sources......Page 228 Secondary works......Page 232 INDEX......Page 245

Using a wide range of legal, administrative and literary sources, this study explores the role of the royal pardon in the exercise and experience of authority in Tudor England. It examines such abstract intangibles as power, legitimacy, and the state by looking at concrete life-and-death decisions of the Tudor monarchs. Drawing upon the historiographies of law and society, political culture, and state formation, mercy is used as a lens through which to examine the nature and limits of participation in the early modern polity.

The 11th of April, being Wednesday, was Sir Thomas Wyatt beheaded up on the Tower Hill...