In England, the treason laws were used to suppress any resistance to
government policy or the monarch and it was not reformed until the 19th century.
The punishment for treason was often an especially cruel death - conviction for
treason was still, theoretically, punishable by death in Britain until 1998.
| Statute of Treasons, 1350 |
The Statute of Treasons, 1350 distinguished
"petty treason" (the murder of one's lawful superior, for example - such as when a wife killed her husband, or a servant his master) from
"high treason".
which covered acts that constituted a serious threat to the stability or continuity of the
state, including attempts to kill the monarch, to counterfeit coins or to wage war against the kingdom.
Previous to the Treasons Act of 1696, most of the people accused of treason had been tried most unfairly,
in many cases the trials resulted in little more than judicial murder.
The act provided protection for those unjustly accussed of treason but it's object was described by
Burnet as "seemed to be to make men as safe in all treasonable practices as possible". It provided that;
The accussed should be furbished with a copy of the indictment five days, and a list of the
jury two days, before the trial;
The accussed should be represented by counsel; and,
The accussed should be convicted on the evidence of not less than two witnesses.
The Lords possessed an ancient right to be
tried by their peers for felony or treason, a right which they surrendered in 1948.
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