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Rh few of the more interesting may be briefly noticed. It was treason to attempt to appeal or annul judgments made by parliament against certain traitors (1398); to break a truce or safe-conduct (1414–1450); to hold castles, fortresses or munitions of war against the king (1552); to adhere to the United Provinces (1665); to return without licence if an adherent of the Pretender (1696); to correspond with the Pretender (1701); and to compass or imagine the death of the prince regent (1817). In addition to these, many acts of attainder were passed at different times. One of the most severe was that against Catherine Howard (1541), which went as far as to make it treasonable for any queen to conceal her ante-nuptial incontinence. Other acts were those against Archbishop Scrope, Owen Glendower, Jack Cade, Lord Seymour, Sir John Fenwick, James Stuart and Bishop Atterbury. In one case, that of Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw, an act of attainder was passed after the death of those guilty of the treason (1660), and their bodies were exhumed, beheaded and exposed. Acts of indemnity were passed to relieve those who had taken part in the suppression of rebellion from any possible liability for illegal proceedings. Three such acts were passed in the reign of William III. (1689–1690). Similar acts were passed after the Irish rebellion of 1798.

The punishment of treason at common law was barbarous in the extreme. The sentence in the case of a man was that the offender be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, that there he be hanged by the neck but not till he be dead, and that while yet alive he be disembowe led and that then his body be divided into four quarters, the head and quarters to be at the disposal of the Crown. Until 1790 at common law a woman was drawn to the place of execution and there burned. In that year hanging was substituted for burning in the case of female traitors. In 1814 the part of the sentence relating to hanging and to disembowelling was altered to hanging until death supervened. Drawing and beheading and quartering after hanging were abolished in 1870. There is no legislation authorizing the execution of traitors within the walls of a prison as in the case of murder (see ). The act of 1814 in the case of men enables the Crown, by warrant under the sign manual, countersigned by a secretary of state, to change the sentence to beheading. Attainder and forfeiture for treason are abolished by the Forfeitures Act 1870, except where the offender has been outlawed. The maximum penalty for a felony under the act of 1848 is penal servitude for life. In every pardon of treason the offence is to be particularly specified therein (see ).

Trials for treason in Great Britain and Ireland were at one time frequent and occupy a large part of the numerous volumes of the State Trials. Some of the more interesting may be mentioned. Before the Statute of Treasons were those of Gaveston and the Despensers in the reign of Edward II. on charges of accroaching the royal power. After the statute were those (some before the peers by trial or impeachment, most before the ordinary criminal courts) of Empson and Dudley, Fisher, More, the earl of Surrey, the duke of Somerset, Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Cranmer, the queen of Scots, Sir Walter Raleigh, Strafford, Laud, Sir Henry Vane and other regicides, William Lord Russell, Algernon Sydney, the duke of Monmouth, and those implicated in the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Gunpowder, Popish, Rye House and other plots. Cases where the proceeding was by bill of attainder have been already mentioned. Occasionally the result of a trial was confirmed by statute. In some of these trials, as is well known, the law was considerably strained in order to insure a conviction. Since the Revolution there have been the cases of those who took part in the risings of 1715 and 1745, Lord George Gordon in 1780, Thomas Hardy and Horne Tooke in 1794, the Cato Street conspirators in 1820, Thomas Frost in 1840, Smith O'Brien in 1848, and in 1903 Arthur Lynch, for adhering to, aiding and comforting the king's enemies in the South African war. The bulk of the treason trials are reported in Howell's State Trials and the New Series of State Trials. The statute of 1351 as interpreted by the judges in these cases is still the standard by which an act is determined to be treason or not. The judicial interpretation has been sometimes strained to meet cases scarcely within the contemplation of the framers of the statute; e.g. it became established doctrine that a conspiracy to levy war against the king's person or to imprison or depose him might be given in evidence as an overt act of compassing his death, and that spoken words, though they could not in themselves amount to treason, might constitute an overt act, and so be evidence. Besides decisions on particular cases, the judges at different times came to general resolutions which had an appreciable effect on the law. The principal resolutions were those of 1397 (confirmed 1398), of 1557, and those agreed to in the case of the regicides at the Restoration and reported by Sir John Kelyng. The effect of this legislation, according to Sir James Stephen, is that such of the judicial constructions as extend the imagining of the king's death to imagining his death, destruction or any bodily harm tending to death or destruction, maim or wounding, imprisonment or restraint, have been adopted, while such of the constructions as make the imagining of his deposition, conspiring to levy war against him, and instigating foreigners to invade the realm, have not been abolished, but are left to rest on the authority of decided cases. The legislation in force in 1878 as to treason and kindred offences was collected by the late Mr R. S. Wright and its substance embodied in a draft consolidation bill (Parl. Pap. 1878 H. L. 178), and in 1879 the existing law was incorporated in the draft criminal codes of 1879. The code draws a distinction between treason and treasonable crimes, the former including such acts (omitting those that are obviously obsolete) as by the Treason Act 1351 and subsequent legislation are regarded as treason proper, the latter including the crimes contained in the Treason Felony Act 1848.

In the words of the draft (§ 76) “ treason is (a) the act of killing Her Majesty, or doing her any bodily harm tending to death or destruction, maim or wounding, and the act of imprisoning or restraining her; or (b) the forming and manifesting by an overt act an intention to kill Her Majesty, or to do her any bodily harm tending to death or destruction, maim or wounding, or to imprison or to restrain her; or (c) the act of killing the eldest son and heir-apparent of Her Majesty, or the queen consort of any king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; or (d) the forming and manifesting by an overt act an intention to kill the eldest son and heir-apparent of Her Majesty, or the queen consort of any king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; or (e) conspiring with any person to kill Her Majesty, or to do her any bodily harm tending to death or destruction, maim or wounding, or conspiring with any person to imprison or restrain her; or (f) levying war against Her Majesty either with intent to depose Her Majesty from the style, honour and royal name of the Imperial Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland or of any other of Her Majesty's dominions or countries; or in order by force or constraint to compel Her Majesty to change her measures or counsels, or in order to intimidate or overawe both Houses or either House of Parliament; or (g) conspiring to levy war against Her Majesty with any such intent or for any such purpose as aforesaid; or (h) instigating any foreigner with force to invade this realm or any other of the dominions of Her Majesty; or (i) assisting any public enemy at war with Her Majesty in such war by any means whatsoever; or (j) violating, whether with her consent or not, a queen consort, or the wife of the eldest son and heir-apparent for the time being of the king or queen regnant."

No amount of residence abroad exempts a British subject from the penalty of treason if he bears arms against the king, unless he has become naturalized as the subject of a foreign state before the outbreak of the war in which he bears arms. To become naturalized as the subject of an enemy during a war is in itself an act of treason. It is well established that an alien resident within British territory owes local allegiance to the Crown and may be indicted for high treason, and there are numerous instances of prosecution of foreigners for treason. Such are the cases of Leslie, bishop of Ross, ambassador to Elizabeth from the queen of Scots (1584), the marquis de Guiscard in Queen Anne's reign and Gyllenborg, the ambassador from Sweden to George I. (1717). Proceedings against ambassadors for treason have never gone beyond imprisonment, more for safe custody than as a punishment. In 1781 La Motte, a Frenchman resident in England, was convicted of holding treasonable communications with France, and in Canada American citizens were tried for treason for aiding in the rebellion of 1837–1838 (Forsyth, 200). Assistance by a resident alien to invaders of British territory is high treason even if the territory in question is in military occupation by the forces of the foreign power.

Of the modes of trying high treason two are obsolete, viz. (1) by appeal in the common law courts, which ceased by the effect of statutes between 1322 and 1399 and were finally abolished in 1819; (2) before the constable and marshal. The last instance of this mode of trial was an