Offences
High treason today comprises:
- Treason Act 1351:
- compassing the death of the sovereign, or of the sovereign's wife or eldest son and heir
- violating the sovereign's wife, or the sovereign's eldest unmarried daughter, or the sovereign's eldest son's wife
- levying war against the sovereign in the realm
- adhering to the sovereign's enemies, giving them aid and comfort, in the realm or elsewhere
- killing the King's Chancellor, Treasurer (an office long in commission) or Justices
- Treason Act 1702 and Treason Act (Ireland) 1703:
- attempting to hinder the succession to the throne under the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701
- Treason Act 1708:
- killing the Lords of Session or Lords of Justiciary in Scotland
- (in Scottish law only) counterfeiting the Great Seal of Scotland
See the English History section below for detail about the offences created by the 1351 Act.
In addition to the crime of treason, the Treason Felony Act 1848 (still in force today) created a new offence known as treason felony, with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment instead of death (but today, due to the abolition of the death penalty, the maximum penalty both for high treason and treason felony would be the same—life imprisonment). Under the traditional categorisation of offences into treason, felonies, and misdemeanours, treason felony was merely another form of felony. Several categories of treason which had been introduced by the Sedition Act 1661 were reduced to felonies. While the common law offences of misprision and compounding were abolished in respect of felonies (including treason felony) by the Criminal Law Act 1967, which abolished the distinction between misdemeanour and felony, misprision of treason and compounding treason are still offences under the common law.
According to the law in force, it is treason felony to "compass, imagine, invent, devise, or intend":
- to deprive the sovereign of the Crown,
- to levy war against the sovereign "in order by force or constraint to compel her to change her measures or counsels, or in order to put any force or constraint upon or in order to intimidate or overawe both Houses or either House of Parliament", or
- to "move or stir" any foreigner to invade the United Kingdom or any other country belonging to the sovereign.
Read more about this topic: High Treason In The United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the word offences:
“A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this—that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made—not to understand—but to feel—as crime.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)