Bibliograph

Mercy and authority in the Tudor state, K.J. Kesselring

Type

Label

Mercy and authority in the Tudor state, K.J. Kesselring

Language

eng

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Mercy and authority in the Tudor state

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Responsibility statement

K.J. Kesselring

Series statement

Cambridge studies in early modern British history

Summary

Using a wide range of legal, administrative and literary sources, this study explores the role of the royal pardon in the exercise and experience of authority in Tudor England. It examines such abstract intangibles as power, legitimacy, and the state by looking at concrete life-and-death decisions of the Tudor monarchs. Drawing upon the historiographies of law and society, political culture and state formation, mercy is used as a lens through which to examine the nature and limits of participation in the early modern polity. Contemporaries deemed mercy as both a prerogative and duty of the ruler. Public expectations of mercy imposed restraints on the sovereign's exercise of power. Yet the discretionary uses of punishment and mercy worked in tandem to mediate social relations of power in ways that most often favoured the growth of the state

Table Of Contents

Mercy and the state -- Changing approaches to punishment and mitigation -- Changing approaches to the pardon -- Patronage, petitions, and the motives for mercy -- Public performances of pardon -- Protest and pardons

resource.variantTitle

Mercy & Authority in the Tudor State

Classification