TREASON, a general term for the crime of attacking the safety of a sovereign State or its head. The law which punishes treason is a necessary consequence of the idea of a State, and is essential to the existence of the State. Most, if not all, nations have accordingly, at an early period of their history, made pro vision by legislation or otherwise for its punishment.
The law of England as to treason corresponds to a considerable extent with Roman law; in fact, treason is treated by Blackstone as the equivalent of the crimen laesae maiestatis. The history of the crime in the two systems agrees in this that in both the law was settled by legislation at a comparatively early period, and subsequently developed by judicial construction. In both, too, there were exceptional features distinguishing this crime from other offences. Treason was the subject of legislation in many of the pre-Conquest codes. The laws of Alfred and Aethelred punished with death any one plotting against the life of the king. The Leges Henrici Primi put anyone slaying the king's messenger in the king's mercy. The crime was shortly defined by Glanvill, and at a greater length by Britton, and by Bracton, who follows Roman law closely.
The offence of high treason was not precisely defined by the common law (I Hale, 76), and until the passing of the Treason Act 1351 depended much on the opinions of the king and his judges. That statute appears to be the answer to a petition of the Commons in 1348 (I Hale, 87), praying for a definition of the offence of accroaching royal power, a charge on which several persons—notably Gaveston and the Despensers—had suffered. The offences made high treason by the statute which still remain are these: (I) to compass or imagine the death of the king, the queen or their eldest son and heir; (2) to violate the king's companion, or his eldest daughter unmarried, or the wife of his eldest son and heir; (3) to levy war against the king in his realm, or be adherent to the king's enemies in his realm, giving them aid and comfort in the realm or elsewhere; (4) to slay the chan cellor, treasurer, or the king's justices of the one bench or the other, justices in eyre, or justices of assize, and all other justices assigned to hear and determine, being in their places doing their offices. In all cases of treason not specified in the statute the justices before whom the case came are to tarry without going to judgment until the cause has been showed and declared before the king and his parliament whether it ought to be judged treason or felony. The statute, so far as it defines the offence of high
treason, is still law.
The statute also treated as high treason forgery of the great or privy seal, counterfeiting the king's coin and importing counter feits thereof ; and this was the law until 1832. These offences are now felonies under the Coinage Offences Act 1861 and the Forgery Act 1913. It also defined petty treason (now merged in wilful murder by s. 8 of the Offences against the Person Act 1860 as the slaying of a master by his servant, a husband by his wife, or a prelate by a man secular or religious owing him allegiance. Between 1351 and 1553 many new offences were made treason, but most of the Acts creating these new treasons were repealed at the earliest opportunity by parliament. The reign most prolific in statutory additions to the law of treason was that of Henry VIII. The Acts of this period were repealed in 1553 and the Act of 1351 was then made the standard of the offence.
Besides the Acts of 1351 and 1553 the following statutes are still in force with respect to the substantive law of treason. By a statute of 1495 persons serving the king de facto in war are not to be convicted of treason against the king de jure. By an Act of 1702 it is treason to endeavour to hinder the next successor to the crown from succeeding, and by the Succession to the Crown Act 1707 it is treason maliciously, advisedly and directly by writing or printing to maintain and affirm that any person has a right to the crown otherwise than according to the Acts of Settlement and Union, or that the Crown and parliament cannot pass statutes for the limitation of the succession to the crown. By the Treason Act 1796, made perpetual in 1817, the definition of treason is extended so as to include plots within or without the realm to cause the death or destruction, or any bodily harm tending to the death, destruction, maiming, or wounding, imprisonment or restraint of the king, his heir or successors, if such plots are expressed by publishing any printing or writing, or by any overt act or deed. Since that date no new forms of treason have been created.