modest levels between 1702 and 1713 , when the war came to an end: in those
twelve years, according to Lorrain, an average of fifteen men and women suf-
fered at Tyburn each year—including but five in 1706 and eight in 1710. The rela-
tively low levels of the first decade of the century were to be once again sharply
reversed in the first five years of the peace ( 1714 – 18 ), when, according to Lor-
rain, the annual average of condemned offenders executed at Tyburn rose to
fifty, and, as in the 1690 s, the execution of ten or more men and women in a day
again became a common sight in London.^108
Yet even in years in which the terror of the law was on frequent display at
Tyburn, the cabinet pardoned a significant number of those sentenced to death
by the judges at the Old Bailey: over the whole period from the Revolution to the
end of Anne’s reign, more than 60 per cent of the men and women convicted at
the Old Bailey were pardoned. Clearly, the cabinet drew limits around the uses
of the gallows. But in doing so, particularly in years in which there were large
numbers of defendants before the court, those cabinet decisions also raised the
unresolved problem of what alternative punishment might be imposed upon
them—of what acceptable conditions of pardon might be devised.
Pardons and the penal crisis
These difficult questions had arisen, as we have seen, between the Restoration
and the Revolution of 1689 , when the failure of transportation removed the only
usable alternative punishment for offenders pardoned by the monarch. The
nature of the problem was vividly expressed by the number of free, or absolute,
pardons that had to be granted in the last years of Charles II’s reign and in
James II’s, essentially releasing from Newgate large numbers of men and women
who had been tried at the Old Bailey and pardoned from the death sentence,
but who could not be transported. It is unclear how that was regarded by the au-
thorities in the 1680 s. The patterns of punishment—or attempted punish-
ment—after the Revolution make it certain that such an outcome was not
acceptable then. The intention of parliament, the government, and the courts
after 1689 was to deal harshly with crime. In part, this meant catching more of-
fenders and ensuring their prosecution and conviction; but, above all, it meant
punishing them effectively. Therein lay the problem, for the weaknesses that
had undermined transportation in the 1680 s as an alternative to execution, if
anything, intensified in the last decade of the century. What had been a penal
problem became more of a crisis and encouraged further efforts in the courts, in
parliament, and in the government to find ways to deal with convicted men and
women who could neither be hanged nor transported.
The simple increase in prosecutions and of convictions by trial juries in the
1690 s contributed directly to that crisis. But the increase was especially trouble-
362 The Revolution, Crime, and Punishment in London
(^108) Ordinary’s Account, 31 October 1718.