Between Royal Pardons and Acts of Oblivion

Abstract

In the 1650s, tragicomedies continued to be composed in which pardoning played a central role. These often took a royalist perspective and reinvigorated a sovereign pardon along the lines of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. At the same time, they dwelt on the appropriate treatment of subordinate figures in the state at moments of what we would now call transitional justice. This chapter focuses on the royalist playwright Cosmo Manuche, including his works The Just General and The Banish’d Shepherdess—which remains in manuscript—as well as a political treatise by his patron, James Compton, Earl of Northampton. Manuche’s plays contemplate the fate of those who have been disloyal to a prior regime but were not leaders of the revolution, while Compton’s treatise advocates for an act of indemnity or oblivion.