GETTY^ IMAGES/ALAMYO
n 23 August 1305, William Wallace
was convicted of treason at West-
minster Hall in London. He then
suffered the gruesome fate of the male traitor:
hanging, drawing and quartering. King
Edward I was determined to revenge himself
brutally on this tiresome figurehead of
Scottish independence – who had famously
defeated English forces at Stirling Bridge in
1297 – and the Wallace case proved to be a
watershed. It signified an extension by
Edward I of the crime of treason, which now
meant not just plotting the death of the king,
but also the act of “levying war” (rebellion).
In this way, England ’s monarchs by the 14th
century were defining “treason” arbitrarily to
suit their own purposes.
In the 1350s the English barons finally
acted to curb such royal behaviour. As part of
a number of political concessions, they used
Edward III’s request for money for his wars in
France to leverage a special parliamentary
law that would define treason more precisely.
According to the 1351 Treason Act, treason
above all meant a crime against the monarch.
It occurred “when a man doth compass or
imagine the death of our lord the king, of our
lady his queen, or of their eldest son”. Here, to
plot treason (compass or imagine) was the
same as to carry out the deed. But it was
also treason to “levy war against our
lord the king in his realm”, or to aid the
king’s enemies, “giving to them aid and
comfort in the realm or elsewhere”.
This might sound like precise language,
guaranteed to restrain royal tyranny. In fact
it proved to be remarkably vague. And an
1 William
Wallace’s
watershed case
The Scot’s trial proved there was
little to prevent kings from using
treason laws to pursue vendettas
10 treason trials
extra clause in the 1351 act offered unscrupu-
lous monarchs still further latitude. It
stipulated that, if judges could not decide
what was “treason”, they had to refer the case
to king and parliament.
Monarchs exploited this new clause to
create “Acts of Attainder”, by which an
individual was simply declared to be a
“traitor” and found guilty of treason by act of
parliament. In short, with parliament’s help,
the king had became judge, jury and, in a
number of cases, executioner.Horrible end Hugh Despenser is hanged, drawn and quartered – on the orders of Queen Isabella
and her ally Roger Mortimer – in Hereford, 1326. By the 14th century, those convicted of treason could
expect to meet with a gruesome deathThe statue of William Wallace in
Aberdeen. His execution in 1305
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expanded from plotting to kill the
king to include perpetrating rebellion