ABSTRACT
Martin Madan (1725–1790) was a barrister and magistrate, and a Church of England clergyman, on the Calvinist wing of the evangelical movement. He was chaplain of the Lock Hospital for penitent prostitutes at Hyde Park Corner. Sir Richard Perryn (1723–1803), Baron of the Exchequer, whom people have already introduced, explicitly rejected Madan’s doctrine in his Charge Given to the Grand Jury for the County of Sussex at the Lent Assizes 1785. The doctrine of maximum severity, expounded by Madan, went contrary to the trend of public and judicial opinion. Madan was swimming against the tide. Capital laws continued to be administered mercifully, with reprieves granted largely on the recommendation of the judges. The learned and worthy Judge reprieved the convict, as wisely determining in his own mind, that such a paltry offence as this, though in strictness made capital by the letter of the law, could never fall within the intention of capital punishment.
