Few writers combine history, politics and excitement of a thriller as enthrallingly as Robert Harris does. * Sunday Times * He’s done a marvelous job of this. Whalley, Goffe and Nayler are vividly drawn, their decisions and actions consistent with the worldviews he has created for them. The arc of the story is well designed, with the focus shifting between New England and London, where Goffe’s wife (Whalley’s daughter) is the primary focus. A fictional memoir drafted by Whalley is an excellent device for filling in details about Cromwell’s rise - and fall.

Harris's cleverness, judgment and eye for detail are second to none -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times * August 1660 Bills passed, British History On-line House of Lords Journal Volume 11 (www.british-history.ac.uk) The year is 1660. The Act of Oblivion has been passed. Charles II has been restored as King of England after a decade of puritan rule by Oliver Cromwell. In the midst of this political upheaval, the question of what to do with the 51 men who signed the death warrant of Charles I remains unanswered. Until the Act of Oblivion. Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II wants revenge on the men who were responsible for the murder of his father, Charles I. Many of the men who signed the warrant for the King’s execution have already died in the normal course of things, or have been rounded up and imprisoned, to be executed in their turn. But several are still on the run, hiding out in England or in Protestant countries on the continent. And two, Ned Whalley and Will Goffe, have made it all the way to the New World, to hide out in the Puritan settlements there. Richard Nayler is the man appointed to hunt them down, a man whose loyalty to the new King is matched by a personal grievance he holds against Cromwell’s men. Every quarry needs a hunter. Harris counterbalances Whalley and Goffe with Richard Nayler, the fictional secretary to the regicide committee of the privy council, who has a powerful personal reason to want them dead. Meanwhile in London, Frances, Goffe’s devoted wife and Whalley’s daughter, provides another viewpoint. The novel’s narrative structure moves to and fro between them, ultimately leading to a brisk if slightly implausible conclusion.

July 1660 Proceedings of Regicides, British History On-line House of Commons Journal Volume 8 (www.british-history.ac.uk) In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is charged with bringing the traitors to justice and he will stop at nothing to find them. A substantial bounty hangs over their heads for their capture—dead or alive...

August 16th, 1660, British History On-line House of Commons Journal Volume 8 (www.british-history.ac.uk) Harris pays much attention to historical details throughout the novel. Dates, names, and locations are historically accurate to the true story of Whalley and Goffe story, with the above mentioned exception of the antagonist, Richard Nayler. XV. Discharges and quietus est given in the exchequer. Accounts of the revenues of churches in Wales. Bribery, subornation, forging, debentures, &c. witnesses. Pacy and tense, and the pungently evoked past offers up some shrewd present-day parallels * Mail on Sunday *Act of Oblivion is a fine novel about a divided nation, about invisible wounds that heal slower than visible ones . . . it feels like an important book for our particular historical moment, one that shows the power of forgiveness and the intolerable burden of long-held grudges * Observer *

The book excels in its stunning recreation of the landscape of America... Harris proves himself to be masterful at this and it gives the book a vibrant memorability * New Statesman * The joy is in the vivid re-creation of 17th Century England and America and in the sly parallels with today that Harris teases out * Mail on Sunday *

Book Summary

An absolutely stunning historical novel and a ripping crime thriller at the same time. I've been recommending it far and wide and buying it for people for Christmas! * Dead Good *

Charles II, 1660: An Act of Free and Generall Pardon Indemnity and Oblivion, Statutes of the Realm: volume 5: 1628–80 (1819), pp.226–34. This article was amended on 30 August 2022. The Act of Oblivion was passed in 1660, not 1652 as an earlier version said. The problem is that this is the majority of the novel because there isn’t a great deal to the story itself. It takes an age for Nayler to get across the pond to the colonies and even longer for anything further to happen. And then nothing really happens after that until the cheesy Hollywood-esque ending. The details of the regicides’ journey are historically accurate, Harris assures us, although he is obliged to speculate when it comes to the latter part of the story. History has not provided us with any information about the identity of the duo’s pursuers, so he has invented a splendid character called Richard Nayler, clerk of the Privy Council and general fixer to the aristocracy. Although Nayler loathes the sybaritic Charles II, he hounds Whalley and Goffe so remorselessly as to make Inspector Javert look like a nine-to-fiver. Whalley begins as a pious and ruthless military commander. He’s a religious fanatic obsessed, as all Puritans in the novel are, with the idea of a Christian republic of England – a land where God rules supreme.

BookBrowse Review

A lot of the book is a cat and mouse game, as Ned and Will have to scurry from one hiding place to another. Much of their time is spent in wilderness conditions. They also encounter various examples of religious fanaticism. In England, their family does not have an easy time of it since they refuse to give up the location of the two fugitives. They also have to cope with a plague and fire. I. Убийствата на крале не са нещо нечувано за 17-ти век, но официална смъртна присъда над едноличен владетел, обнародвана и приведена в изпълнение публично, безспорно е прецедент. В рамките на 11 години Англия е република. Посланието на надделелите през тези 11 години пуритани, наред с останалото, за първи път в Европа ясно и категорично заявява, че кралете не са над закона, важещ за техните поданици. И че властта на кралете не се дава от Бога, напук на официалната теза. An Irish act by the same name "An Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity, and Oblivion [for Ireland]" was sent to the Duke of Ormonde on 16 August 1664 by Sir Paul Davys, the Irish Secretary of State. [23] In popular culture [ edit ] The Act of Oblivion may seem no more than a curiosity today. Congress has never passed such an Act, nor is it likely to do so. Yet as Meyler has shown in a piece titled Pardon, but Don’t Forget 26 Open this footnote Close this footnote 26 Meyler, supra note 23. … Open this footnote Close in the Take Care blog, the Anglo-American rejection of the Acts of Oblivion may itself illuminate contemporary legal life. Bernadette Meyler’s Theaters of Pardoning 1 Open this footnote Close this footnote 1 Bernadette Meyler , Theaters of Pardoning (2019). … Open this footnote Close offers a profound and provocative meditation on the relationship between forgiveness and the state. In this comment, I follow her methodological and substantive lead by taking literary and legal approaches to a curious form of pardoning she discusses in her work—the “Act of Oblivion.” The Act of Oblivion operated as a super-pardon: It was “a form of general amnesty erasing the record of the underlying events rather than simply remitting punishment.” 2 Open this footnote Close this footnote 2 Id. at 29. … Open this footnote Close Pardon is to oblivion as forgiving is to forgetting.