century pardons in ordinary felony cases were part of the criminal process, com-
monplace and accepted as essential to the management of a criminal justice sys-
tem in which large numbers of offenders were in danger of being hanged. They
were sufficiently common and sufficiently integrated into criminal justice pro-
cedures by the Restoration that it seems reasonable to think of there being two
kinds of pardons relating to felony convictions. The largest number by far were
what one might call ‘administrative’ pardons. They were decided fundamentally
by the judge who heard the case at the provincial assizes or by the judges and the
recorder at the Old Bailey. Their reprieve of a convicted felon whom they had
sentenced to death was tantamount to a pardon. The recommendation of mercy
was processed by the office of the secretaries of state. The pardon document, is-
sued by the Chancery, would be authorized by the monarch’s signature, but each
case almost certainly did not require the king’s or queen’s personal approval. On
the other hand, a petition for mercy from a defendant who had been passed over
by the judge and left to be hanged might well come to the monarch’s attention
and the decision whether to grant a pardon or confirm the sentence (after the rele-
vant judge’s opinion had been sought) may have been made with their involve-
ment—though how often that happened in the case of ordinary felons is difficult
to say. The distinction between administrative and more personal pardons none
the less remained important: it was still very much alive in the first half of the eight-
eenth century, for whenever George I and his son visited Hanover they left lords
justices with power to confer pardons on condemned felons who had been re-
prieved by the judges in court, but reserved to themselves decisions with respect
to prisoners who had been left to be hanged and who petitioned for their mercy.^71
A pardon could relieve the recipient from any punishment that followed a
criminal conviction. The most important pardons—certainly the most visible,
in the sense of making a public demonstration of the king’s mercy—were those
that saved a convicted offender from the death penalty. But pardons were also
granted to mitigate other, non-capital, punishments; Charles II relieved gentle-
men from the branding that followed a conviction for the clergyable felony of
manslaughter, and from the fine that was occasionally imposed in such cases. In
the years after the Restoration large numbers of what were called ‘special’ par-
dons were issued under the Great Seal—that is, a single pardon for a named in-
dividual. Such documents were very expensive indeed and were most often
sought by wealthy men who had been prosecuted for murder but convicted of
manslaughter—having killed someone in a duel or by accident or in self-
defence—and who faced the possibility ofbeing branded on the thumb, or, as
convicted felons, of having their estates forfeited to the Crown.^72
288 The Old Bailey in the Late Seventeenth Century
(^71) See below, p. 450.
(^72) Convicted felons’ estates were still occasionally confiscated and sold in this period, and pardons
continued to be granted to include ‘all paines penalties and forfeitures... with restitution of lands and
goods as in like cases are Usuall.. .’ (SP 29 / 76 , fo. 181 ). But confiscation was rare, and by the first decades
of the eighteenth century those convicted of manslaughter can no longer be found seeking a formal