Summary
Today we frequently presume that treason is first and foremost a crime against “the state.” This was not always the case. The law of treason in England was at the time of its statutory declaration in 1352 as much a personal crime against the monarch as the unlawful usurpation of his sovereign authority. Compassing the death of the monarch and his heir apparent was arguably more heinously treasonable than forging his seal and issuing false charters in his name. However, during the late medieval and early modern periods new demands emerged. The English law of treason became the principal means of enforcing not only new religious policies in England and Wales but also self-consciously “imperial” policies in the newly created Kingdom of Ireland. In the century before Britain's civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century, developments including the Reformation under Henry VIII, the extension of English control over the whole of Ireland, and the spread of the Counter-Reformation had already imposed unprecedented demands on the law of treason. However, the dramatic events of the civil wars of the 1640s culminating in the trial and execution of King Charles I for high treason in 1649 and the establishment of a “Commonwealth or Free State” in place of the monarchy constituted, unquestionably, the greatest challenge to the existing English law of treason.
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- Treason and the StateLaw, Politics and Ideology in the English Civil War, pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002