Treason Act 1351

The Treason Act 1351 is an Act of the Parliament of England which codified and curtailed the common law offence of treason. No new offences were created by the statute. It is one of the earliest English statutes still in force, although it has been very significantly amended. It was extended to Ireland in 1495 and to Scotland in 1708. The Act was passed at Westminster in the Hilary term of 1351, in the 25th year of the reign of Edward III and was entitled "A Declaration which Offences shall be adjudged Treason". It was passed to clarify precisely what was treason, as the definition under common law had been expanded rapidly by the courts until its scope was controversially wide. The Act was last used to prosecute William Joyce in 1945 for collaborating with Germany in World War II. The Act is still in force in the United Kingdom. It is also still in force in some former British colonies, including New South Wales. Like other laws of the time, it was written in Norman French. The Act is the origin of the definition of treason in the United States (in Article III of the Constitution). Joseph Story wrote in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States that: they have adopted the very words of the Statute of Treason of Edward the Third; and thus by implication, in order to cut off at once all chances of arbitrary constructions, they have recognized the well-settled interpretation of these phrases in the administration of criminal law, which has prevailed for ages. Until 1351 treason was defined by the common law. The king's judges gradually expanded the scope of treason under the pretext that any "assortment of royal power", by which was meant doing anything which only the king (or his officers) could legally do, was considered treason – even hunting deer in the king's forests. When in 1348, Sir John Gerberge of Royston was convicted of treason for falsely imprisoning William de Boletisford and taking his horse, until he paid him £90 (approximately ), the barons compelled Edward III to agree to an Act of Parliament to restrict the definition of treason to definite limits.