The other evening I enjoyed a talk from Euan Rogers of The National Archives, who gave a talk at Lancaster for the Centre for War and Diplomacy on the history of treason over 700 years.

He began by pointing out that treason reflects a real sense of betrayal, but also has a legal definition which people don’t really understand. It was not defined in law until the 14the century. This is the first time we see the idea of the monarch being above everyone, and Edward I came up with a novel way to clamp down on opposition, using parliament to provide evidence of treachery, and the judges to condemn. They are then swiftly executed traitors, often in a symbolic way. Heretical acts were punished by disembowelment and burning, as that’s where the heretical thoughts were believed to come from. But it could also be used to to destroy noble families because a traitor not only forfeited their life but their titles.

Clear lines were drawn in 1352 with 5 key clauses to define treason that are still in law today:

• Attempting to kill the king, Queen, or eldest son
• Violating the Queen, the king’s eldest daughter or his eldest son’s wife.
• Levying war against the king
• Adhering to the king’s enemies
• Killing the Chancellor, Treasurer, or Royal Justices while performing their royal duties

Other parts have since been repealed. Any changes had to be made by the king in parliament.

Everything started to go wrong with Richard II because he was a child king and factions grew. They started to use charges of encroaching on the king’s power, as they had in Edward II’s reign. The Peasant’s Revolt is not treated as treason because it’s not about pennants on a battle field. Parliament begins to push its rights, and into the 15^th century the Lancastrians are clearly worried about treasonous words. John Whitlock was clearly a traitor by adhering to the kings enemy, but it’s his words that are important and what they were most interested in because they might rouse others to action. Likewise, Eleanor Cobham was accused of treasonous magic, but they had no idea how to try her as a noble woman. As a woman, her peers were not men, and men were the jury of peers. Instead, she was tried in a spiritual court as an associate of the menfolk who were actually her associates. In the aftermath they change the law so that they can try noble women with a jury of men in the future. The other development of the period was the process of attainder, in which people could be declared a traitor by parliament.

Henry VIII’s reign saw an explosion of treason, which of course is where my interest really lies. The reign is famous for some of the examples in Henry’s later years, but Euan pointed out that Henry was tyrannical from very early on – he used the example of the Evil May Day riots from 1517. It wasn’t treason by any of the normal definitions so they went looking for a statute so that they could try it as treason to make an example of the rioters. It also demonstrates the power of the pardon to create a show of leniency as a deterrent. Nevertheless, one of the first acts of Edward VI’s reign was to repeal a lot of the treason legislation from Henry’s reign.

He talked about Gunpowder Plot, noting that it was a plot against not just the king but also the Parliament. But of course in the mid 17^th century the king himself was put on trial for treason and the House of Commons had to create a new court to allow it, so this action was particularly dubious. The court justified the treason accusation on the grounds that the king levied war against his people. The Restoration saw Charles II be ruthless against the regicides (to the extent that dead bodies were dug up and put on trial for treason) but in order to try to reset the balance, for most people he was very lenient.

By the end of the 18^th century, new movements grew up around universal male suffrage, and the government were very afraid of the ideas being spread in Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man. Hardy, the leader of the suffrage movement, was acquitted of treason, which was really embarrassing for the government. There were lots of disloyal toasts committed in the pub, which was also the place where the Cato plot was organised. The government brought in legislation to prevent meetings of more than 50 people, so they got round it by claiming that they were just having dinners.

Euan also pointed out that the American Declaration of Independence is never thought of as treasonous, but of course it was. We don’t think of it that way because it was successful. Moreover, treason is the only law outlined in the Declaration of Independence, but with the reference to the monarchy replaced with the state. In the colonies, it was adapted again to be compassing the death of any white person.

But martial law was much quicker than a full treason trial, so with the Easter Rising in 1916, the only full treason trial was of Roger Casement, while all the rest were tried under martial law.  All the male rebels who were tried were executed, but the only woman, Constance Markieviez, had her sentence remitted solely on account of her sex.

Lord Haw Haw was the last man to be executed for high treason, but he wasn’t British, he was American Irish, so there was a real question over whether he could be tried for treason against the British state. Ultimately, the only part of his life when he could be charged with treason was while he was in Germany working for the Nazis on a fraudulently obtained British passport before he repudiated it.

He concluded by thinking about whether high treason should still be on the statute book, and why you would try someone for treason in 2023. He noted that as other statues have taken over most of the things that people would be tried for, treason probably now relates more to the monarch than it ever has since 1352.