The UK is celebrating the centenary of the passing of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which allowed some women to vote for the first time. This has enlivened a debate relating to the posthumous pardon of Suffragettes convicted of offences during the campaign for ‘Votes for Women’. The History of Parliament’s Director and editor of the Commons 1640-1660 section, Dr Stephen Roberts explains the significance of the royal pardon in Restoration England…
Posthumous pardoning has recently become a powerful and emotive element in public discussion. Classes of people thought to have suffered injustice at the hands of the state have attracted champions who have argued that their offences should be effaced from the record as unjust or morally monstrous. Two examples are the British soldiers of 1914-18, shot for acts which at the time were considered to have amounted to cowardice or desertion; and the
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