Treason Act 1351
United Kingdom legislation
The Treason Act 1351 (25 Edw. 3 Stat. 5. c. 2) is an act of the Parliament of England where, according to William Blackstone, common law treason offences were enumerated and no new offences were created. 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, better known as "Lord Haw-Haw", in 1945 for collaborating with Germany in World War II.
The act is still in force in the United Kingdom.
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This entry incorporates text from “Treason Act 1351” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.