limiting the king’s ultimate authority. William continued to be consulted on dif-
ficult cases when he was out of the country, and he was present at the minister-
ial meetings at which the pardon business was discussed when he returned.
Subsequent monarchs continued to preside over such meetings, continued to
make decisions about individual pardons issued under the Great Seal, and con-
tinued to be involved, if they chose, in the consideration of appeals for pardons
from felons in Newgate, as well as those around the country condemned to be
hanged. None the less, a system was put in place that gave the king’s ministers
considerable influence over the decisions that determined the level of execu-
tions at Tyburn, and that thus determined the public face of criminal justice in
the capital.
It is unclear when the City recorder first attended a meeting of ministers and
became the link between the cabinet and the Old Bailey, but he was certainly
doing so by 1693. He was called before the council to report on Old Bailey cases
inJanuary of that year, when the Court of Aldermen first took cognizance of this
new procedure and saw in it a threat to their rights and privileges, or at least to
the influence that the lord mayor and the other City magistrates might expect to
exercise as members of the bench over the sentencing of London convicts.^71 It is
also possible that their resentment had more to do with the character of the man
who was the recipient of this new influence—Salathiel Lovell, who had become
recorder in 1692. Several times in his career Lovell was suspected of influence-
peddling and other corrupt activities, and it may well have been thought by his
enemies (and as a strong whig he certainly had many tory enemies in the City)
that he should not be supplied with such a golden opportunity to feather his
nest.^72 At any event the aldermen attempted to preserve a role for themselves in
this new process. ‘It is the opinion of this Court and so ordered’, they declared
inJanuary 1693 ,
That after every Sessions of Gaole delivery of Newgate, Mr Recorder doe before he
attend his Matie with his Report Come unto this Court and take the Sence andJudgment
of the same in what Character and Circumstance he shall Represent to his Majesty the
severall Condemned persons.^73
Such prior consultation was clearly not workable, if only because the
recorder could be called to a cabinet meeting at short notice and could hardly
fail to attend because the aldermen had not yet had their say. Strong feelings
were obviously being expressed through the summer of 1693 : Lovell himself
350 The Revolution, Crime, and Punishment in London
relieved a convicted person from the consequences ofhis or her actions, whereas the dispensing and sus-
pending powers attacked the basis oflaw by removing the illegal character of the action itself. The latter
were to all intents abolished by the Bill of Rights (Lois G. Schwoerer, The Declaration of Rights, 1689 (Balti-
more, Md., 1981 ), 59 – 64 ). The monarch’s right to grant pardons in criminal cases remained unques-
tioned, indeed indispensable, to the working of the judicial system. Lord Chancellor Finch was not alone
in valuing the monarch as ‘the fountain of mercy, as well as of justice’ (BL, Add. MSS 36088 , fo. 6 ).
(^71) Rep 97 , p. 95. (^72) For Lovell’s greed and corruption, see Ch. 5 , n. 68.
(^73) Rep 97 , p. 100.