Research Results For 'Treason'

ACCESSARY

In law, an accessary or accessory is a person guilty of an offence by connivance or participation, either before or after the act committed, as by command, advice, concealment, etc. An accessary before the fact is one who procures or counsels another to commit a crime, and is not present at its commission; an accessary after the fact is one who, knowing a felony to have been committed, gives assistance of any kind to the felon so as to hinder him from being apprehended, tried, or suffering punishment. An accessary before the fact may be tried and punished in all respects as if he were the principal. In high treason, all who participate are regarded as principals.
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ATTAINDER

Attainder is the legal consequences of a sentence of death or outlawry pronounced against a person for treason or felony, the person being said to be attainted. It resulted in forfeiture of estate and 'corruption of blood,' rendering the party incapable of inheriting property or transmitting it to heirs; but these results now no longer follow. Formerly persons were often subjected to attainder by a special bill or act passed in parliament.
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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Capital punishment is punishment by death. Capital punishment is retained in 92 countries and territories, including the 37 states of the USA, China, and Islamic countries. It was abolished in the UK in 1965 for all crimes except treason - in 1998 the death penalty for treason was finally abolished in the United Kingdom. Methods of execution include electrocution, lethal gas, hanging, shooting, lethal injection, garrotting, and decapitation. In Britain, the number of capital offences was reduced from over 200 at the end of the 18th century, until capital punishment was abolished in 1866 for all crimes except murder, treason, piracy, and certain arson attacks. Its use was subject to the royal prerogative of mercy. The punishment was carried out by hanging (in public until 1866).

The improvement in the penal laws of Europe in respect to the reduction of capital punishment may be traced in large part to the publication of Beccaria's treatise on Crimes and Punishments (Dei Delitti e delle Pene) in 1764. At that time in England, as Blackstone a year later pointed out with some amount of feeling, there were 160 capital offences in the statute book. The work of practical reform was initiated in 1770 by Sir William Meredith, who moved for a committee of inquiry into the state of the criminal laws; but the modifications secured by it were few, owing to the opposition of the House of Lords, which continued down to 1832 to oppose systematically all attempts at criminal law reform.

The publication of Madan's Thoughts on Executive Justice, in 1784, urging the stricter administration of the law as it then stood, brought out the opposition of Sir Samuel Romilly, who replied to it in 1785, and introduced at short intervals a series of bills for the abolition of the extreme sentence for minor offences. The influence of Paley and Lord Ellenborough, and the reaction from the revolutionary principles, which prior to the French Revolution had inaugurated great penal changes in France, told strongly against his efforts; and even his Shoplifting Act, to abolish the sentence of death in cases of theft to the value of five shillings, was resolutely rejected, though passed by the Commons in 1810, 1811, 1813, and 1816. Romilly's work was taken up by Sir James Mackintosh in 1820, and under Peel's ministry with greater success. At his death, however, in the year of the passage of the Reform Bill (1832) forty kinds of forgery with many less serious offences were still capital, though from that time the amelioration was rapid. In the five years following the Reform Act, the capital offences were reduced to 37, and subsequent changes left in 1861 only four capital charges - setting fire to H.M. dockyards or arsenals, piracy with violence, treason, and murder. By 1906 only treason and murder were capital offences in England, andScotland also, though robbery, rape, incest, and wilful fire-raising were still capital crimes in Scottish common law.

Prior to 1868 executions were conducted in public in England, but then in 1868 the law changed that all executions were to be conducted in private within the prison walls. Capital punishment for murder was abolished in the United Kingdom in 1965 but still exists for treason, and during the 1980's it was revealed that the police had a shoot-to-kill and summary execution policy for those suspected of being terrorists. In 2005 a 27 year old Brazilian man was executed by being shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder after being tackled to the ground by plain clothed police officers who mistakenly believed him to be a suicide bomber.

In 1990, Ireland abolished the death penalty for all offences. In Saudi Arabia execution is by beheading in public. Countries that have abolished the death penalty fall into three categories: those that have abolished it for all crimes (44 countries); those that retain it only for exceptional crimes such as war crimes (17 countries); and those that retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes but have not executed anyone since 1980 (25 countries and territories).

The first country in Europe to abolish the death penalty was Romania in 1864, followed by Portugal in 1867, Holland in 1870, and by Switzerland in 1874. In the USA, the Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional in 1972, as a cruel and unusual punishment, but decided in 1976 that this was not so in all circumstances. It was therefore reintroduced in some states. Many countries use capital punishment for crimes other than murder, such as drug offences (in Malaysia and elsewhere). In 1977 the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ruled out imposition of the death penalty on those under the age of 18. The covenant was signed by President Carter on behalf of the USA, but in 1989 the US Supreme Court decided that it could be imposed from the age of 16 for murder, and that the mentally retarded could also face the death penalty.
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CARBONARI

Carbonari was the name of an Italian political secret society, which appears to have been formed by the Neapolitan republicans during the reign of Joachim (Murat), and had for its object the expulsion of the strangers and the establishment of a democratic government. The ritual of the Carbonari was taken from the trade of the charcoal-burner. A lodge was baracca (a hut); a meeting was vendita (a sale); an important meeting alta vendita.

There were four grades in the society; and the ceremonies of initiation were characterized by many mystic rites. The language of religion was much used to express their purposes. Christ was the lamb torn by the wolf and whom they were sworn to avenge. Clearing the wood of wolves (opposition to tyranny) became the symbolic expression of their aim. By this they are said to have meant at first only deliverance from foreign dominion; but in later times democratical and antimonarchical principles sprang up, which were discussed chiefly among the higher degrees. The order, soon after its foundation, contained from 24,000 to 30,000 members, and increased so rapidly that it spread through all Italy. In 1820, in the month of March alone, about 650,000 new members are said to have been admitted.

After the suppression of the Neapolitan and Piedmontese revolution in 1821, the Carbonari, throughout Italy, were declared guilty of high treason, and punished as such by the laws. Meantime societies of a similar kind had been formed in France, with which the Italian Carbonari amalgamated; and Paris became the head-quarters of Carbonarism. The organization took on more of a French character, and gradually alienated the sympathies of the Italian members, a number of whom dissolved connection with it, in order to form the party of 'Young Italy.'
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CATO STREET CONSPIRACY

The Cato Street Conspiracy was a plot to murder British ministers in 1820. Arthur Thistlewood, who had already been mixed up with revolutionary projects, conceived a plan for assassinating Lord Castlereagh and his ministerial colleagues at a dinner in Grosvenor Square, London on February 23rd. Arms were collected in a hired rendezvous in the neighbouring Cato Street. The plot was discovered, and Thistlewood and his colleagues (Brunt, Davidson, Harrison, Ings, Monument, Tidd and Wilson) were arrested (Arthur Thistlewood escaped at the time, but was arrested the next day). All eight were sent to the Tower of London and Thistlewood and four others were hanged for high treason on May the 1st 1820.
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COERCION ACTS

The Coercion Acts were Acts passed by the British parliament for the purpose of enforcing law and order in Ireland. Since the Union in 1800 the British Parliament was obliged to pass several Coercion Acts, especially towards the middle of the 19th century, when the Fenian Society aroused English feeling by various outrages.

In 1880 and 1881, when the agrarian movement in Ireland developed into something resembling a system of organised terrorism, culminating in the Phoenix Park murders, Gladstone's government, so as to put a stop to the state of lawlessness prevailing in the country, passed the Coercion Act of 1881, and the Crimes Act of 1882. By the first, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland was empowered to arrest any person on mere suspicion, for treason and intimidation. A Coercion Bill, introduced by Balfour in 1887, was put in force in 1918, when the need again arose for the repression of crime in Ireland.
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COMMONWEALTH V CATON

The Commonwealth v Caton was an important American legal case. John Caton and others, having been convicted of treason by the general court of Virginia and sentenced to death, were pardoned in 1782 by the House of Delegates of the State, the Senate not concurring. The pardon was not executed, and the attorney-general denying its validity, the case was brought before the Court of Appeals of Virginia in 1782. There it was decided that this court had jurisdiction in such matters, but it was declared that the pardon was not valid without the concurrence of the Senate, and that this act of the Legislature was unconstitutional. This was the second instance in which a court assumed authority to pronounce upon the constitutionality of an act of the Legislature.
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DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES

The dissolution of the monasteries in England was carried out by Henry VIII between 1535 and 1539. This was an attack on Church property for three reasons. First, the monks were the main supporters of the Papal authority in England, and they were members of orders which were spread over Europe. It had proved possible to separate the English bishops and clergy from allegiance to the Pope; this was not possible with the monastic orders, which were international, not insular, institutions. The second reason was the wealth of the monasteries, which was the result of the pious bequest of many centuries. The cry against monastic wealth had been raised many times previously in English history, particularly by John Wycliffe and others from the time of Edward III and Richard II. The courtiers of Henry VIII and the rising middle class were greedy for land, and Henry VIII saw that by ministering to their greed he could make his new nobility and their new property a firm support of his Reformation. The third reason for ending the monasteries was
the reason given to Parliament: that the monks had outlived their day of usefulness and were abandoned to idleness and vice. There were over 600 religious houses in England, and no doubt there was some truth in this charge. Zealous churchmen had long known that all was not well with these ancient institutions. In Henry VII's reign the Oxford Reformers had rebuked monkish follies, and Cardinal Morton had noted the 'incurable uselessness' of many of the smaller houses where the monks were idle and ignorant. Cardinal Wolsey had obtained a Papal Bull to visit the monasteries, and had begun to suppress some, intending to use their revenues for the benefit of education and the New Learning and to found new bishoprics. One of them, St. Frideswide's Priory at Oxford, he converted into Cardinal College (later Christ Church).

In 1535 Henry VIII made Thomas Cromwell his Vicar-General, 'with power to visit any monastery in England'. The character of Cromwell was sufficient guarantee that the visitation would not be conducted fairly. He knew what was expected of him; he was to be 'The Hammer of the Monks'. His agents hurried through England, visited some of the monasteries, and drew up an evil report. This report unfortunately no longer exists. Our only information is derived from Cromwell's note-books and from the letters of his agents, from which we may gather something of their methods. For example, Dr. Layton, vicar of Harrow-on-the-Hill, dashed through southern England from Gloucestershire to Rent between August and October 1535. He condemned monasteries wholesale, on insufficient evidence, although at the same time he did not scruple to accept bribes from some, or to help himself to plate and jewels from others.

However, Parliament was satisfied, and the country squires, anxious for the 'goods of the Church', shouted ' Down with them!' The Act dissolving 276 of the lesser monasteries of England in 1536 was the last important Act of the Reformation Parliament. In dissolving the smaller monasteries first, Henry VIII had cautiously tested his power. But his violent measures had by 1536 caused grave discontent, especially in the west and north, and in Parliament itself. His wholesale destruction of the smaller monasteries was followed by two popular uprisings. The first occurred in Lincolnshire, where the rebels were crushed by a military force under the Duke of Suffolk. The second rising, in Yorkshire in 1536, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, was much more serious. The following year the famous shrine of Becket at Canterbury was attacked. Thomas Becket was declared in April 1538 'a false saint and a traitor to the Supreme Head of the Church'; his bones were burnt; his shrine pillaged and its offerings confiscated.

Then Henry VIII was ready to turn his attention to the greater monasteries, although Parliament had saved them earlier because of their good conduct. Cromwell and his agents in 1539 began a persecution of the abbots: many were induced to surrender their abbeys to the king; others could only be reduced by methods of terror. The Abbots of Reading and Colchester were tried for treason; the Abbot of Glastonbury for felony. All three were executed. The odious methods of Cromwell are well shown in some notes left in his own handwriting: 'To see that the evidence be well sorted and the indictments well drawn against the said abbots. The Abbot of Reading to be sent down to be tried and executed at Reading with his accomplices. The Abbot of Glaston to be tried at Glaston, and also executed there with his accomplices.' The last Abbot of Glastonbury, a pious, venerable man beloved in the countryside, was executed with two of his brethren on Glastonbury Tor, after a mock trial in November 1539. These ferocities had the desired effect: many less brave spirits gave in, and soon there were no monasteries left. The dissolution of 616 religious houses was the greatest revolution in the ownership of land in England since the Norman Conquest. The monastic income has been variously estimated at between one-fifth and one-third of the total rental of England.

This newly acquired wealth the king might have used in developing public works, such as education. Some of it was spent in re-building the Navy; but the king's own greed and the greed of courtiers swallowed most of the spoil. A thousand newly enriched families became the nobility on which Henry in future relied for support. The 'Abbey' where the descendants or successors of these Tudor families now live is a name to be found in many an English village. But sad indeed was the fate of the original buildings. Some, like the great church at Tewkesbury, have been preserved in the form of parish churches; others have been partly preserved to form cathedrals. But the greater number were ruthlessly destroyed by their new possessors, their roofs despoiled for the valuable lead, their walls made quarries for new buildings, their treasures scattered, and their ruins left desolate. Whatever defence may be made for the suppression of the monastic orders, no excuse can be offered for this orgy of destruction, which deprived England of some of her noblest monuments.
It is probable that at least 15000 persons were cast adrift. These people went to swell the already large number of the unemployed, for whom Tudor statesmanship could find no better relief than the savage punishments inflicted on thieves and vagabonds. Some of the monks were given benefices or pensioned by the Government, but the pensions were not always paid; the occupants of the lesser houses fared worse than those of the greater. The hospitality which the monks had always given to the poor was now removed. There was nothing to take its place, and many monks and nuns joined the ranks of those who had formerly subsisted on their charity. Many gaps were left in national life, for the abbeys, said Aske 'were one of the beauties of this realm to all men and strangers passing through the same; all gentlemen much succoured in their needs with money, and in nunneries their daughters brought up in virtue. And such abbeys as were near the danger of seabanks were great maintainers of sea-walls and dykes, builders of bridges and highways, and such other things for the commonwealth.'
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DORR REBELLION

The Dorr Rebellion was an effort made between 1840 and 1842 to overturn the State government of Rhode Island by revolutionary means. After the Declaration of Independence, Rhode Island retained her charter government. Many of the citizens, headed by Thomas Dorr, of Providence, became discontented with the existing government and its limited suffrage. Mass meetings were held, and in October, 1841, a convention of delegates prepared a Constitution, which was submitted to a popular vote, and was claimed to have received a majority of the votes of the State. The legitimate government treated these proceedings as nugatory, and, in a measure, criminal. On May the 3rd, 1842, the 'suffrage legislature' assembled at Newport, with Thomas Dorr as Governor. King, the legitimate Governor, proclaimed martial law. The suffrage party appealed to arms. Their troops were dispersed and Thomas Dorr fled. He was afterward captured and convicted of treason, but was pardoned in 1852.
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HABEAS CORPUS

In law, habeas corpus is a writ ordering a person to be brought before a court or judge. The term is particularly applied to a writ so issued so that the court may ascertain whether the person's detention is lawful. From the time of the Magna Charta imprisonment at the discretion of any person has been unlawful in England, but for long the royal prerogative was so indefinite and the power of the crown so great that persons were frequently detained in custody at the discretion of the crown. It was not until the 17th century that the Habeas Corpus Act, passed in 1679 provided the great remedy for the violation of personal liberty by the writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum (that you have the body to answer).

The provisions of the act may be stated generally thus : 1. That on complaint or request in writing, by, or on behalf of, any person committed and charged with any crime (unless treason, felony, etc, expressed in the warrant), the lord-chancellor, or any of the judges shall award a habeas corpus for such prisoner, and shall discharge the party, if bailable, upon security being given to appear and answer to the accusation. 2. The writ shall be returned, and the prisoner brought up within a limited time, not exceeding twenty days. 3. No person once delivered by habeas corpus shall be recommitted for the same offence. 4. Every person committed for treason or felony may insist on being tried at the next assizes, or admitted to bail, and if not tried at the second assizes or sessions, he shall be discharged from the imprisonment. The writ may be applied for by persons confined in any part of England, or Jersey and Guernsey. As the writ originally had to do solely with crimes, the statute 56 George III. cap. c. was passed, which extended the writ to other than criminal cases.

The result was that no person could be illegally confined in England for any length of time, since some friend could always apply for a habeas corpus, which, on a good prima facie case, would be issued. If the party was confined under recognized authority, as a child by a parent, this fact had to be stated.

In times of great political excitement, and suspected treasonable conspiracies, the operation of the Habeas Corpus Act has been occasionally suspended, and during the early 21st century under the pretext of 'combatting terrorism' exceptions made to it. But such suspension does not enable any one to imprison without cause or valid pretext for so doing. It only prevents persons who are committed from being bailed, tried, or discharged during the suspension, leaving to the committing magistrate all the responsibility attending on illegal imprisonment.

In Scotland similar protection of the liberty of the subject was secured by the Wrongous Imprisonment Act of 1701. The English statute was copied in the United States without essential change.

In the United States habeas corpus was suspended on July the 5th, 1861. Attorney-General Bates gave an opinion in favour of the President's power to declare martial law and suspend the writ of habeas corpus. A special session of Congress approved this opinion. Thereafter many arbitrary arrests were made, arousing much indignation. On September the 24th, 1862, the suspension was made general by the President so far as it might affect persons arrested by military authority for disloyal practices. An act of Congress, on March the 3rd, 1863, again authorized the suspension of the writ by the President in cases of prisoners of war, deserters, those resisting drafts and offenders against the military or naval service. The arrest of Vallandigham, in Ohio, and of Milligan, in Indiana, caused great excitement. The case of the latter being brought before the Supreme Court of the Union, that body decided that Congress could not give to military commissions the power of trial and conviction, and that the suspension of the privilege of habeas corpus did not suspend the writ itself. In the case of the Ku-Klux rebellions there was a brief suspension of habeas corpus in 1871.
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