High treason in the United Kingdom

Considered to be the most serious of offences (more than murder or other felonies), high treason was often met with extraordinary punishment, because it threatened the safety of the state.

The last conviction under a Treason Act was of Jaswant Singh Chail in 2023, who was charged with an offence relating to a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth II.

At the time of the trial his offences were referred to in the media as simply "treason",[3] but the statute he was charged under describes it as "a high misdemeanour".

[4] High treason today consists of: For detail about the offences created by the 1351 Act, see § History: England and Wales.

For instance, during the reign of Edward III, a knight was convicted of treason because he assaulted one of the king's subjects and held him for a ransom of £90.

[9] First, it was high treason to "compass or imagine the death of our Lord the King, of our Lady his Queen, or of their eldest son and heir."

The terms "compass or imagine" indicate the premeditation of a murder; it would not be high treason to accidentally kill the sovereign or any other member of the royal family (though someone could be charged with manslaughter).

It is not sufficient to merely allege that an individual is guilty of high treason because of his thoughts or imaginations; there must be an overt act indicating the plot.

Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, wives of Henry VIII, were found guilty of treason for this reason.

The jurist Sir William Blackstone writes that "the plain intention of this law is to guard the Blood Royal from any suspicion of bastardy, whereby the succession to the Crown might be rendered dubious."

As she was then the wife of the Prince of Wales, heir to the throne, this fitted the definition of high treason, and a national newspaper briefly attempted[13][14] to have Hewitt prosecuted for what was then still a capital offence.

Richard II, however, was deposed; his successor, Henry IV, rescinded the legislation and restored the standard of Edward III.

William III made it high treason to manufacture, buy, sell or possess instruments whose sole purpose is to coin money.

George II made it high treason to mark or colour a silver coin so as to make it resemble a gold one.

[23] A notable treason trial occurred at the Old Bailey in 1916 when Roger Casement was convicted of collusion with Germany for his role in the Easter Rising in Ireland.

The prosecution countered that as Casement had worked as a diplomat for the British Government for almost all of his adult life and had accepted a knighthood and a pension from the Crown on retirement in 1911, he owed personal loyalty to the King when he committed the acts for which he was brought to trial.

William Joyce (also known as Lord Haw Haw) stood accused of levying war against King George VI by travelling to Germany in the early months of World War II and taking up employment as a broadcaster of pro-Nazi propaganda to British radio audiences.

[citation needed] The only evidence offered at his trial that he had begun broadcasting from Germany while his British passport was valid was the testimony of a London police inspector who had questioned him before the war while he was an active member of the British Union of Fascists and claimed to have recognised his voice on a propaganda broadcast in the early weeks of the war (he already had previous convictions for assault and riotous assembly as a result of street fights with communists and anarchists).

Until 1945 treason had its own rules of evidence and procedure which made it difficult to prosecute accused traitors, such as the need for two witnesses to the same offence.

His trial and execution were irregular; they were more accurately products of a revolution, rather than a legal precedent[citation needed], and those responsible were themselves tried for treason after the monarchy was restored (see List of regicides of Charles I).

During the reign of Henry VIII, however, it was enacted that in the cases of high treason, an idiot could be tried in his absence as if he were perfectly sane.

In 1661, Parliament passed acts posthumously attainting Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton and John Bradshaw—who were previously involved in Charles I's trial—of treason.

This meant that when James Hewitt was accused of treason by the tabloid press in 1996 because of his affair with the Princess of Wales,[34] he could not have been prosecuted because it could not be proved that he had done it within the foregoing three-year period.

[43][44] In England and Wales, a person charged with treason may not be granted bail except by order of a High Court judge or of the Secretary of State.

[citation needed] By 1965, capital punishment had been abolished for almost all crimes, but was still mandatory (unless the offender was pardoned or the sentence commuted) for high treason until 1998.

[61] Treason (but not powers of arrest or criminal procedure) is an excepted matter on which the Northern Ireland Assembly cannot legislate.

The Treason Act 1351, on the other hand, has not been significantly amended; the main changes involve the removal of counterfeiting and forgery, as explained above.

On 8 August 2005, it was reported that the UK Government was considering bringing prosecutions for treason against a number of British Islamic clerics who have publicly spoken positively about acts of terrorism against civilians in Britain, or attacks on British soldiers abroad, including the 7 July London bombings and numerous attacks on troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On 2 August 2022, Jaswant Singh Chail was charged with offences under section 2 of the Treason Act 1842, and also with making threats to kill and possessing an offensive weapon, a crossbow.

He had been arrested in the grounds of Windsor Castle on 25 December, 2021 and was charged with "discharging or aiming firearms, or throwing or using any offensive matter or weapon, with intent to injure or alarm her Majesty".