The Commons therefore determined that the royal prerogative of mercy should be limited.
Several regulations were devised for the purpose of making the passing of pardons difficult and costly: and finally it was enacted that every pardon granted by his Majesty, after the end of November 1689, to any of the many hundreds of persons who had been sentenced to death without a trial, should be absolutely void and of none effect.

Sir Richard Nagle came in state to the bar of the Lords and presented the bill with a speech worthy of the occasion.

"Many of the persons here attainted," said he, "have been proved traitors by such evidence as satisfies us.

As to the rest we have followed common fame." [231] With such reckless barbarity was the list framed that fanatical royalists, who were, at that very time, hazarding their property, their liberty, their lives, in the cause of James, were not secure from proscription.

The most learned man of whom the Jacobite party could boast was Henry Dodwell, Camdenian Professor in the University of Oxford.