Robert Harris's latest offering is a gripping piece of historical fiction, a blend of fact and fiction that imagines the turbulent period of history after the Restoration. It is 1660 and the monarchy in the form of Charles II has been returned to power, Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe are wanted for the execution of King Charles I, a consequence of the English Civil War, followed by the rule of Oliver Cromwell. They board a ship to cross the Atlantic to America and the New England colonies, where many Puritans reside, sympathetic to their plight, landing in Boston. They are on the run, with the royalists demanding a savage retribution. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, 59 men who signed Charles I's death warrant have been found guilty in absentia of regicide and high treason.

The most richly accomplished of the brothers’ pairings to date—and given Connelly’s high standards, that’s saying a lot. Harris doesn’t take sides in his narrative. He explains Puritan and royalist viewpoints accurately and leaves the reader to make their minds up. On the one hand, we have a dysfunctional and morally corrupt monarchy, trying to find its feet in England which had been deprived of a king for a decade. On the other, the radical beliefs of religious purists. You may find your sympathies lie with characters you would never normally align with. The wounds of the brutal civil war are still visible on men’s bodies”: the execution of Charles I in Whitehall, London, 1649. Illustration: Hulton Archive/Getty Images Harry Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer team up to exonerate a woman who’s already served five years for killing her ex-husband.Nayler is searching for them. A fictional character, created by Harris, he appears a less sympathetic person than Ned and Will, but reveals the other face of this civil war which had split the nation; a royalist supporter who had dipped his handkerchief in the king's blood and who always carried it with him. The 1660 Act worked off a prior template. The Act of Oblivion of 1563, enacted by the Scottish Parliament, mandated that “all deede . . . contrair the Lawes of this Realme . . . and the memorie thereof . . . be expired, buryed and extinct for ever: even as the same had never bene maid . . . .” 5 Open this footnote Close this footnote 5 Id. at 181 (quoting “The Act of Oblivioun,” in 2 The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland 535-36 (Thomas Thomson & Cosmo Innes eds., 1563)). … Open this footnote Close The 1660 Act followed suit in fashioning a state-mandated exercise in collective amnesia. It barred the populace from making malicious allegations “against any other person or persons, any Name or Names, or other Words of Reproach, any way tending to revive the Memory of the late Differences.” 6 Open this footnote Close this footnote 6 Id. at 243 (quoting An Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion, 12 Car. II c. 11 (1660)). … Open this footnote Close And it had teeth—Meyler reports that anyone who violated it was “forced to pay the aggrieved individual a fairly significant fine.” 7 Open this footnote Close this footnote 7 Id. … Open this footnote Close Cannon, John (21 May 2009). Indemnity and Oblivion, Act of. ISBN 978-0-19-955037-1 . Retrieved 16 March 2022.

Harris certainly seems to have done his research and he brings the time period to life convincingly enough with lots of detail. You know how sometimes people say they learn more about history through reading historical novels than actual history books? I can see people saying that about Harris’ historical novels like this one. One of the people to benefit directly from the Act was John Milton, who was released from prison. [10] Overview of sections [ edit ] VII. All things not excepted shall be pardoned by the general words of this act, as well as if particularly named.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 * Part of the novel is written from the perspective of Nayler and part from the points of view of Ned Whalley and Will Goffe. This means that the reader knows from the beginning exactly where Ned and Will have gone – they have crossed the Atlantic to America, to build new lives for themselves in the like-minded Puritan colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. When Nayler arrives in pursuit, however, the two regicides are forced to move from one hiding place to another, never able to relax, knowing that they could be betrayed by anyone at any time. My knowledge of 17th century English history doesn't go much beyond the basics. Before reading this book I was unaware of the scope of the hunt for the "regicides", the men who were responsible for the beheading of Charles I as part of Cromwell's rise to power. Edward Whalley and his son-in-law William Goffe, officers in Cromwell's army, escaped from England to America, thus avoiding the ominous fate that awaited those who were captured in England or on the continent. Act of Oblivion: A Novel is a fictionalization of their lives, and those around them, after they landed in Boston.

I have been waiting for most of my life for Robert Harris to write a novel that is not gripping, insightful and entertaining. I am waiting still -- Ben Macintyre * The Times *

This book is a sweeping saga set in the 1600s about the hunt for two (real) men, William Goffe and Edward Whalley, who signed the death warrant of Charles I, and their life in hiding in America. Richard Nayler is the fictional hunter of the “regicides.” The hunt begins in 1660 upon restoration of Charles II, son of Charles I, to the throne of England after the ousting and death of Oliver Cromwell. The titular Act of Oblivion pardoned the past treasons committed against the Crown, with the exception of the regicides. The two fugitives are related by marriage – Whalley is the father-in-law of Goffe. Whalley is also cousin to Oliver Cromwell. The families are the two men also feature in the narrative.

As Meyler notes, formal Acts of Oblivion were putatively short-lived: “In mid-seventeenth-century England, the language of oblivion seemingly sprang from nowhere to become a prominent element of political discourse; it enjoyed a brief efflorescence through the late eighteenth century then rapidly disappeared as suddenly as it had emerged, giving way to the related and sometimes linked concept of amnesty.” 3 Open this footnote Close this footnote 3 Id. at 177. … Open this footnote Close Under Charles II, the Restoration Parliament enacted the famous 1660 Act of Oblivion, which required not only forgiveness, but also the forgetting of the revolutionary events that had deposed Charles I. 4 Open this footnote Close this footnote 4 See id. at 200-01. … Open this footnote Close August 1660 Lords reminded of Bills, British History On-line House of Commons Journal Volume 8 (www.british-history.ac.uk)XLVI. Bonds taken in his Majesty's name before May 1642 for securities of any his Majesty's receivers, not pardoned. &c. Whalley is the only reflective character, confronting the possibility (in the memoir, though not to others) that perhaps God had not been on the side of the Parliamentarians. Goffe and Nayler remain rigid in their views to the end, starkly representing the opposing sides.