{"id":1147,"date":"2016-09-09T14:52:13","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T14:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/?p=1147"},"modified":"2016-09-11T18:59:52","modified_gmt":"2016-09-11T18:59:52","slug":"friday-feature-working-upon-the-royal-sympathy-researching-the-myth-and-reality-of-victorias-royal-mercy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/2016\/09\/09\/friday-feature-working-upon-the-royal-sympathy-researching-the-myth-and-reality-of-victorias-royal-mercy\/","title":{"rendered":"Feature: “Working upon the royal sympathy: researching the myth and reality of Victoria\u2019s royal mercy”"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY JAMES GREGORY<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Portrait<\/a>
Portrait by George Hayter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A beautiful young queen is moved to commute the sentence on those condemned to be executed for high treason \u2013 with all the horrors of hanging, drawing and quartering \u2013 aided by the advice of her dashing prime minister. Viewers of the most recent, third, episode of ITV\u2019s series, Victoria <\/em>(which aired 4 September 2016), were presented here, at least, with something that echoed a Victorian reality, if not the facts of the Queen\u2019s relationship to the reprieve of the leaders of the Chartist rising at Newport in South Wales in 1839.<\/p>\n

While Daisy Goodwin\u2019s script goes for drama over historic accuracy (in the plotline involving the queen\u2019s response to her dresser, whose nephew is one of the condemned men), the treatment of the Chartist rising in the \u2018Brocket Hall\u2019 episode does raise the question about what role the queen actually played in the exercise of mercy after rebellions across her empire? And what did her contemporaries think her private feelings and actions were?<\/p>\n

My research is interested in the mythmaking and rumour concerning such acts of royal mercy. For just as Queen Victoria enjoyed a makeover as the photogenic Jenna Coleman in the 2016 series, the real Queen of the late 1830s came to be presented in hagiography and iconography as the na\u00efve but kind-hearted girl \u2013 succeeding to a crown tarnished by the misbehaviour of her uncles \u2013 who insisted on showing mercy towards those condemned to death.<\/p>\n

These stories circulated in press accounts and popular histories of the reign at the time of her 1887 and 1897 jubilees, and at her death. See, for example, \u2018The Queen and the Deserter\u2019s Death Warrant,\u2019 an illustration by Baines from Robert Wilson\u2019s The Life and Times of Queen Victoria<\/em> (published in 1893) and George Alfred Henty\u2019s Queen Victoria: scenes from her life and reign<\/em> (published in 1901) which also included an illustration of \u2018The first death warrant\u2019.<\/p>\n

These reflect popular conceptions from the start of her long reign that the queen was obliged to sign death warrants; or that appeals to the queen in person, might force her Home Secretary to grant a stay of execution.<\/p>\n

This idea of the royal exercise of mercy was politicised from the beginning of the Victorian era, with newspaper tales of royal ignorance or clemency shaped by Tory, Whig and radical prejudices.<\/p>\n

Goodwin\u2019s script for the new series, has focused in the early episodes in part on the relationship between the new queen and her Whig prime minister, played by the suave Rufus Sewell. And certainly Melbourne was discussed in relation to royal mercy, by the contemporary press. In the \u2018Chit-Chat\u2019 section to The Satirist<\/em>, in 26 November 1837, for example, there appeared the following scene:<\/p>\n

\u2018How do they hang men?\u2019 asked the all gracious Queen of her royal mother, after executing the death warrant of the Scotch criminal. \u2018With a rope, my dear,\u2019 replied the Duchess. \u2018A rope!\u2019 exclaimed the maiden sovereign, \u2018do you mean a skipping-rope?\u2019 Lord Melbourne, who was present, as in duty bound, explained the mystery of criminal strangulation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here, Melbourne is presented in the guise of the wise paternal figure: the reality according to biographers of Melbourne was that he thought Victoria would not hesitate to sign a death warrant if she thought the culprit deserved to be executed.<\/p>\n

The press had a powerful role to play. The London paper John Bull<\/em>, which was rabidly anti-Whig, noticed a news item which had been published in various newspapers in July and August 1837:<\/p>\n

On the first warrant for execution being presented to the QUEEN to sign, she burst into tears. Lord MELBOURNE said, \u2018Your Majesty knows you have the prerogative of mercy.\u2019 \u2018Then\u2019, she replied, \u2018let the sentence be changed to transportation for life.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

John Bull<\/em> corrected this basic error about the sovereign\u2019s role, for \u2018everybody who happens to know anything\u2019 knew this was not so \u2013 in the past it had only been in London that the monarch was directly involved in the exercise of the death penalty, it reminded its readers, when the king merely said to the Home Secretary let the law take its course. The bill removing this role had been introduced \u2018for some unknown reason\u2019, and thus \u2018a privilege taken away from the wretched culprits, who always looked up most justly and reasonably to the Royal mercy, or at least the royal investigation, of which the present Liberal Ministers have deprived them.\u2019 The \u2018poor young Queen\u2019 by Whig coup<\/em> had been deprived of what was \u2018considered one of the blessed prerogatives of her station\u2019.<\/p>\n

Despite the scorn of a newspaper such as John Bull<\/em>, the episode concerning the queen\u2019s tearful appeal to her prime minister over the fate of a military deserter (in some versions, the figure advising her, is the Duke of Wellington), had a surprising durability as an episode in her popular biography, often with the title \u2018Think again, I pray you!\u2019 taken from the admonition the monarch was supposed to have uttered to the statesman, before she gives her signature to the reprieve.<\/p>\n

Chartists did<\/u> appeal to the young Queen to exercise her royal influence to save the Newport Chartists from a barbarous execution, and as the campaign continued into the 1840s to release them from their Australian exile. The Chartist Executive Committee, addressing the members of the National Charter Association, explained its strategy in January 1846 thus (as reported in the main Chartist paper):<\/p>\n

According to the authority politically phrased our glorious Constitution!<\/em> the Queen is the fountain of mercy. She alone has the power of annulling or commuting a sentence pronounced by judicial authority. Hence, then, our course is clear; to snap the chains of captive patriots, we must work upon the royal sympathy; we must strive by every available means to direct the current of royal clemency to Frost, Williams, and Jones, that it may refresh them with liberty and happiness.<\/p>\n

Northern Star<\/em>, 17 January 1846<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Relatives of condemned infanticides and murderers would also continue to appeal to the Queen throughout her reign. Newspaper readers were told in 1886:<\/p>\n

It has long been understood to be the personal desire of Queen Victoria that her reign should be signalised by the abolition of the hangman.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Gallows and the Jubilee!\u2019 Northern Echo<\/em>, 18 November 1886<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Empire too, when presented as a force for mercy in the world, was linked to the figure of the merciful Queen in discourse around the abolition of slavery or (ironically) in the aftermath of the rebellion in India in 1857. The Baptist Magazine<\/em> had stated:<\/p>\n

Millions, still half-enslaved, and bitterly oppressed, are seeking now for succour, and relief, from her benignant clemency. Every sophism that can be used, by sinners trained to cruelty, and bloated with the fruit their oppression, will be employed to dry up all the deep fountains of her compassion<\/p>\n

Baptist Magazine<\/em>, September 1837, p.400<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Scholars have explored the exercise of mercy by monarch and elites in the modern and early modern period \u2013 looking at mercy in the Tudor period, for example in studies such as Mary Villeponteaux\u2019s The Queen\u2019s Mercy. Gender and Judgment in Representations<\/em> and\u00a0K.J. Kestelring\u2019s Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Mercy as the brightest jewel in the royal diadem remained a clich\u00e9 of eulogy directed at Hanoverian royalty in poetry, funeral sermons and obituaries. I am interested in Victoria\u2019s presentation in newspaper editorials, correspondence, and cartoons, such as those in the satirical Judy <\/em>(commenting on the efforts to reprieve Fenian terrorists in 1867): wielding or staying the sword of justice.<\/p>\n

As part of my project on the cultural history of mercy, I\u2019ve also studied the representation of mercy in painting and statuary \u2013 in royal courts of justice, in the rebuilt houses of parliament, and in historical painting. The depiction of mercy extends beyond monarchy\u00a0and,\u00a0in the period I study, it was fundamentally associated with a theology of divine judgement and the question, ‘when should the magistrate wield the sword of justice or mercy?’. <\/em>However,\u00a0in the Victorian era, it is also expressed in such concerns as animal welfare, with the establishment of \u2018Bands of Mercy\u2019 \u2013 which also enjoyed royal approval (through the patronage of the RSPCA) \u2013\u00a0in Britain to teach children kindness to animals .<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"xlarge_1447816\"<\/a>About the author:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr James R.T.E. Gregory<\/a> is\u00a0Programme Leader for the\u00a0MA<\/a>\u00a0&\u00a0ResM<\/a> in History, and\u00a0Lecturer in British History since 1800 at Plymouth University. He is the author of\u00a0The Poetry and the Politics: Radical Reform in Victorian England<\/a><\/em> (2014) and\u00a0Victorians Against the Gallows: Capital Punishment and the Abolitionist Movement in Nineteenth Century Britain<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(2011).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY JAMES GREGORY A beautiful young queen is moved to commute the sentence on those condemned to be executed for high treason \u2013 with all the horrors of hanging, drawing and quartering \u2013 aided by the advice of her dashing prime minister. Viewers of the most recent, third, episode of ITV\u2019s series, Victoria (which aired… Continue reading Feature: “Working upon the royal sympathy: researching the myth and reality of Victoria\u2019s royal mercy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":1150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,137],"tags":[292,33,295,421,299,420],"class_list":["post-1147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-histories-memory-memorialisation","tag-19th-century","tag-history","tag-james-gregory","tag-modern-history","tag-puncs","tag-queen-victoria","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1154,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions\/1154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}