Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History) by Kesselring, K. J - 2003

Cambridge University Press, 2003. Hardcover. Near Fine/Near Fine. 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." Octavo. 238 numbered pages. In brown cloth binding. From the private collection of Boston historian Frederick A. Hagar. Bookplate on front pastedown, else Fine. Pages remain clean and unmarked; binding, tight. In handsome dust jacket.