their offences. The extant copies of these lists in the State Papers show little evi-
dence that he had consulted the judges or anyone else. When he met the cab-
inet, the recorder stood at the end of the table, reported on each case in turn,
and received an immediate decision—that is, whether the offender was to be
hanged or pardoned, and if pardoned whether he or she was to be punished in
some alternative way or simply allowed to go free.
An under-secretary of state was to say in the 1760 s that this reporting of the
cases of condemned offenders to the king gave these men and women ‘a kind of
double Chance’, compared to provincial offenders who had to petition to have
their cases reviewed if they were passed over for a reprieve in court.^81 Perhaps so;
but it was a chance that probably occupied the members of the cabinet for even
less time than the trial juries had taken to find the original verdicts. Petitions
may have been sent in by some of the condemned prisoners or from their rela-
tives and friends.^82 But there was precious little time in which to organize a pe-
titioning campaign. In the 1680 s—before the recorder was required to make a
report to the cabinet council—there was most often no more than a week or ten
days between the passing of the death sentence at the Old Bailey and the carry-
ing out of that sentence at Tyburn. The recorder’s report had the effect of
lengthening that period slightly—by something in the order of two days in the
mid- 1690 s, perhaps four days on average in Anne’s reign.^83 But even two weeks
gave little opportunity for a condemned prisoner to employ someone to write up
a petition in proper form and to solicit support.
In the absence of petitions, the ministers who met to decide who would be
hanged and who pardoned consulted no written evidence. They depended en-
tirely on the recorder’s brief oral account of each trial, any information he had
gathered about the offenders that he chose to report, and no doubt his hints or
recommendations as to appropriate outcomes—either to let the law take its
course and the defendant be executed, or to grant a pardon and order an alter-
native punishment as a condition. Most of the cases were no doubt passed over
very quickly since the recorder’s report was fitted into a meeting at which a wide
range of subjects would be on the agenda. The fate of a group of convicted
felons was not likely to be allowed to take a great deal of time if affairs of state
pressed for attention. None the less, there is some evidence that the council did
not simply rubber stamp all the recorder’s recommendations: some cases were
discussed. What, then, were these ministers and courtiers looking for as they
heard the recorder describe the cases before them? Some sense of the consider-
ations that shaped pardon decisions can be found in the recorders’ reports,
352 The Revolution, Crime, and Punishment in London
(^81) William L. Clements Library (Ann Arbor, Michigan), Shelburne Papers 168 , fo. 146. I am grateful
to Simon Devereaux for this reference.
(^82) For petitions sent in to be ‘read in Council’, see SP 34 / 5 , fo. 6 ; and SP 34 / 35 , fo. 49.
(^83) Based on Luttrell’s dating of the sessions and of the subsequent hanging days. In 1682 – 5 he reports
a range of 4 – 14 days between the sentence and the carrying out of executions and an average of 7. 6 ; in
1695 – 8 the range was 5 – 20 days and the average 9. 6 ; in 1702 – 3 and 1708 – 9 together the range was 6 – 19
days and the average 11. 2 (Brief Historical Relation, vols. 1 – 4 , passim).