The value of an individual pardon, inscribed on parchment and issued by the
Chancery under the Great Seal, was presumably that it would prevent any sub-
sequent difficulty over the inheritance of an estate. Few of the men and women
who were pardoned after being convicted of property offences could afford or
had need of such a document. They were included in a document passed under
the Privy Seal by a simpler procedure and known as a ‘general’ or ‘circuit’ par-
don for the ‘poor convicts’ being held in a particular gaol, or in the gaols of an
assize circuit—‘poor’ convicts because of the assumption that they would not be
able to afford a separate pardon under the Great Seal. In Lord Keeper Guil-
ford’s ‘Directions for drawing of circuit pardons’, he emphasized that ‘No per-
son to be inserted [in a circuit pardon] that is able to bear the charge of a
particular pardon’.^73 Most of the condemned felons pardoned in Middlesex and
London were bundled together in a general pardon issued from time to time for
the Old Bailey.^74 When such a document passed the seal, after what could be a
long wait, the offenders named were brought back into court from Newgate (or
were ordered to appear in the case of those fortunate enough to have been
granted bail) and were allowed to plead their pardon on their knees—a cere-
mony that provided the judges with an opportunity to discourse on the king’s
goodness and on the chance afforded these pardoned men and women to make
a fresh start in life.^75
The Old Bailey in the Late Seventeenth Century 289pardon. If confiscation was no longer common, the branding of clergy remained possible following a
manslaughter conviction, and the king was frequently petitioned to relieve men of the humiliation of a
permanent felon’s mark on the thumb and of other punishments (imprisonment, for example) that were
occasionally imposed in such cases. Such pardons were regularly granted: indeed, it was not uncommon
for them to be granted in advance of the trial, to take effect if the accused was in fact convicted of
manslaughter. For examples in this period of warrants to the recorder and the sheriffs of London re-
prieving men before their trial at the Old Bailey if they were convicted of manslaughter, and deferring
the punishment for which they were liable, see CSPD 1661 – 2 , p. 423, 470; CSPD 1670 , p. 580 ; CSPD
1673 – 5 , p. 347 ; and many examples in subsequent years. Charles II had followed a rule, Secretary Jenk-
ins said in 1684 , of not granting pardons before trial in the case of ‘high offenders’, that is serious
offenders (CSPD 1683 – 4 , p. 278 ).
(^73) BL, Add. MSS 32518 , fo. 117.
(^74) General or circuit pardons were distinct from the kind of general pardons occasionally issued to cele-
brate royal coronations and other days of high festivity, under which the monarch might choose to ex-
tend mercy to groups of petty offenders, and from statutory pardons. Jacob Joyner, indicted at the Old
Bailey in May 1686 for the theft of a jewel valued £ 700 from the Earl of Stamford, ‘was pardoned by His
Majesty’s late General Pardon’, issued following James II’s coronation when the court noticed that the
theft had taken place before 10 March and thus fell into the period covered by the proclamation (OBSP,
May 1686 , p. 4 ).
(^75) The ceremony at which pardons were formally conferred were occasionally noted in the Minute
Books of the gaol delivery sessions for the City at the Old Bailey (CLRO: SM 53 , September 1682 ; SM
57 , March 1685 ) and occasionally in the printed proceedings of the court. The Sessions Paper for Janu-
ary 1692 , for example, reported that at the conclusion of the session, thirty-five men and women con-
demned at previous sessions, were brought into court, called over by name, and asked ‘why execution
should not be awarded against them... [to which] they all upon their respective Knees pleaded Their
Majesties... most Gracious Pardon.. .’ (OBSP, 15 – 19 January 1691 / 2 , pp. 5 – 6 ). Accounts of pardon
ceremonies, with the names of defendants and the conditions attached to the pardons granted, were
also occasionally separately printed in the late seventeenth century: see, for example, An Account of the
Proceedings upon His Majesties Gracious Pardon.. .( 21 March 1685 ).