Cover

Impressum

Dedicated to the memory of my dead grandmother Klara Kreutzberg, as well as to the memory of my deceased parents Gertrud and Engelbert Eder. They all died all too soon and left me very lonely.

 

At the Instigation of the Devil“: Capital Punishment and the Assize in the Early Modern England, 1670-1730



Copyright © Markus Eder 2013

Chapter I: Introduction


I.1 Problems and arguments: The present state of research on capital punishment

Although emotionally one of the most polarizing aspects of English legal history, the topic of capital punishment, surprisingly, has as yet not received the kind of careful attention it deserves. Quite to the contrary, its study has up to now suffered from regional and periodical limitations as well as from ideological bias. If studied in its own right, as in Peter Linebaugh`s The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century or Brian Henry`s The Dublin Hanged: Crime, Law Enforcement, and Punishment in Late-Eighteenth-Century Dublin, its treatment has been largely limited to an eighteenth century urban background. Admittedly, this has not always proved a disadvantage, as the primary sources for large urban centres in general, and capitals in particular, are often much more fuller than those surviving for smaller communities. Linebaugh, for example, has not only been able to draw on the official legal records of the city of London, but also on the so called records of the Ordinary of Newgate. These last mentioned records contain the verbatim transcripts of the interviews conducted by the churchmen at London`s most important prison, Newgate, with the capitally convicted prior to their execution. Naturally, such a rich source offers ample insight into the life of the convicted and their motives for committing crime, although, of course, many such convicts might have been tempted to present their deeds in an excessively favourable light. Last Dying Speeches, too, which were the speeches capitally convicted persons delivered to the execution audience immediately before their death, are much more extant for the large metropolises than for more rural areas. The same holds true for transcripts of court proceedings, which -due to improved shorthand techniques-increasingly appear from roughly 1740/1750 onwards for trials in metropolitan areas. Nevertheless, limiting oneself to the large metropolises undoubtedly raises for a period in which 70-80 percent of all English still lived in the countryside the issue of representativeness. A point Linebaugh himself concedes in another publication. Moreover, the unilateral emphasis on the eighteenth century, or, to be more precise, on the period after the passage of the so called transportation act of 1718 with its far reaching consequences. for the administration of capital punishment, might somewhat distort the picture.(1) Apart from their focus on the metropolises and their eighteenth century bias, Linebaugh`s and Henry`s publications also suffer from a certain ideological predeterminism. Everybody reading the introduction and prefaces to his book, will easily recognize, that particularly Linebaugh considers the purpose of his work more to be a tool for the present day fight against the death penalty than as an unbiased piece of historical writing. Consequently, he paints eighteenth century authorities` administration of the death penalty in rather bleak colours, in order to discredit present day administration of the death penalty with reference to its allegedly dirty early modern roots. What emerges, is the picture of an pretendedly evil Stuart king failing to prevent plague and London fire (as if anybody would be able to prevent natural catastrophies of that kind) and of capital punishment as an mere instrument for controlling the impoverished eighteenth century proletariat.(2) To be sure, it is of course possible to be divided on the issue of the death penalty, but whatever attitudes one holds towards this sort of punishment, fairness and historical truth should not suffer, if it comes to discussing this form of penalty.

Studies approaching capital punishment within the general framework of crime and punishment have not always fared that much better. Most of them are studies of one single British county, and most of these studied counties are areas closely situated to the centre London, and therefore somewhat under the spell of the capital. Whether such one-county studies of areas under the influence of London provide a representative picture of capital punishment in early Modern England as a whole, must appear somewhat doubtful. Like Linebaugh`s and Henry`s studies on capital punishment, they are furthermore, for the most part, very much limited to the eighteenth and early nineteen centuries.(3)

Even the few studies who have a broader regional and/or periodical focus, as, for example, those penned by Sharpe, Beattie, Walker or Morgan and Rushton, to a certain degree, fail to overcome these shortcomings. James Sharpe in his Crime in Seventeenth Century England: A County Study admittedly treats the seventeenth century, too, but once again his approach is limited to one county, Essex, and once again this county is regionally closely situated to London. John Beattie` s Policing and Punishment in London 1660-1750 treats capital punishment in the context of general crime in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries` London. Although inclusive of the seventeenth century, too, the scope of his book is once again limited to London and is furthermore selective in the sense, that it evaluates only every third year of his chosen period. It, furthermore, leaves out violent crime as, for example, homicide, robbery, high treason or rape completely. His earlier book Crime and the Courts in England, 1660-1800 has -despite its title- a clear eighteenth century focus. Moreover, with Surrey as its main object of study, the closeness to London is once again evident. Garthine Walker: Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early modern England focuses on Chester in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This focus on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is valuable, but the question must once again remain, whether the 20000-30000 souls` Palatinate of Chester at the border to Wales really provides much representativeness for England as a whole. Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton have dealt with crime in the area of the Northern Circuit and with transportation in the areas of the Western Circuit, the Northern Circuit, and some other areas of England. They can therefore very well claim to have transcended the one county barrier. However, they, too, largely limit their studies to the post-1718 period, which is the period after the passage of the Transportation Act of 1718.(4)

Against this background of somewhat fragmentary present day research, it appears desirable to compose a study that puts the research on capital punishment on a broader regional and periodical footing. In doing so, we will have to strike a compromise: Due to loss of archival material, it certainly will not be possible to write a history of capital punishment for the whole of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries` England. Instead, it will be necessary to choose an area large and representative enough to reach valid conclusions for the whole nation. In my opinion, the so called Western Circuit as one of the largest and one of the most far stretching of all English Assize circuits qualifies best for such an undertaking.


I.2 The legal and socio-economic patterns of the Western Circuit

Legal Patterns

As far as the more serious crimes are concerned, the legal map of early Modern England was divided up into six Assize Circuits, three Palatinate jurisdictions and the Old Bailey for London and Middlesex. The latter was, strictly speaking, not called an Assize but nevertheless functioned as one . The six Assize Circuits were the Midland Circuit, the Oxford Circuit, the Western Circuit, the Northern Circuit, the Norfolk Circuit, and the Home Circuit. The three Palatinate Jurisdictions comprised Chester, Lancashire and Durham. Apart from the Northern Circuit, which only had one yearly Assize, and the Old Bailey featuring eight annual sessions, each of these jurisdictions witnessed two annual sessions, a Winter Assize and a Summer Assize. These Assizes were chaired by judges from the central Courts at Westminster, who for that purpose travelled around the country twice a year. When arrived at an Assize - town, the Assize-judge worked together with two kinds of juries, the so called grand jury and the petit or trial jury. The grand jury determined whether there was enough evidence to justify further legal proceedings against the accused or not. If the grand jury had doubts about the validity of the evidence, it could pronounce either a „non true bill“- ruling or an ignoramus ruling („we do not know“). In these cases of grand-jury doubts, the accused was in general immediately released. If, on the contrary, it found the evidence convincing, it pronounced a so called „true bill“-ruling, and the accused was handed over to the trial jury. The trial jury could then by an unanimous vote, and only by an unanimous one, fully or partially convict the offender.(5)

Socio-economic Patterns

Within this framework of higher jurisdiction, the Western Circuit was one of the most populated ones. Its six counties Hampshire, Wilteshire, Dorsetshire, Cornwall, Devonshire and Somersetshire comprised during the period 1670-1730 about 1,2 million people on average. It was probably also the one with the greatest regional variation, as it stretched from Hampshire in the middle of England to Cornwall in the Western outskirts. Moreover, with about 70-80 percent of its population living in the countryside, it reflected the overall demographic patterns of early Modern England fairly well.(6) Economically, too, the area showed a great deal of variation. While the mines of Cornwall were famous for their copper and tin, the textile industry, whose products were to be exported via Exeter to southern Europe, featured prominently in Devonshire. Portsmouth in Hampshire was the most important site for ship construction, and also served as port of transshipment for exports of textiles to France and Southern Europe. Bristol, although strictly speaking not belonging to one of these six counties, performed a similar function for textile exports to the West Indies and North America.(7)

Historically speaking, the area had by no means been a quiet one. Beginning with the so called Cornish Rising in the fifteenth century, over the Western Uproar and the Western Rising in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the so called Monmouth rebellion of 1685, popular unrest had manifested itself many times in violent defiance to the central authority in London. This somewhat elaborate tendency towards rebellion and the ready access to the sea via ports like Plymouth, Portsmouth or Bristol might very well have favoured this area` s early adoption of transportation, as the penal measure of banishing convicts to other parts of the world was called.(8)

I.3 Relevant capital statutes and its application during the period 1670-1730

 

In principal, all serious crimes, felonies, were till 1706 to be punished with death. However, with regard to some (but not all) of these felonies, there existed for men the possibility to escape the noose by the device of claiming benefit of clergy. Originally reserved for churchmen, it was increasingly applied to all males who could prove their literacy. This proof of literacy in general consisted of reciting psalm 51 of the bible, the so called neck verse. As even illiterate men could learn this psalm by heart, benefit of clergy increasingly served for all kind of males as an effective means of escaping the hangmen. Therefore, a male claiming successfully benefit of clergy was only punished by being burnt into the hand.

Admittedly, there were restrictions to the concept of benefit of clergy. Women, for example, were completely excluded from it and had to suffer death if committing felony, although a statute of 1623 allowed women to get away with being burnt in the hand in cases of simple theft of not more than ten shillings value. No sooner than 1693 legislation was passed that exempted women from the death penalty for felonies clergyable in men. Men, too, could not always be sure to get away with hand burning for clergyable offenses. An angry judge dissatisfied with a jury verdict reducing, for example, a charge of non-clergyable murder to clergyable manslaughter always had the discretionary power to evaluate the reading test as not passed. In such a case, the convicted person would still be executed. Admittedly, such cases became increasingly rare, but, particularly in the late seventeenth century, still occurred. Moreover, clergy was only available for the first time offender. If a man committed a second felony, he would hang. In 1706, legislation abolished the reading test for clergyable offenses, and a first time offender could therefore be absolutely sure not to be hanged for a clergyable offense. Parliament, too, had played its role in restricting the scope of benefit of clergy, as from the middle of the sixteenth century onwards more and more crimes and felonies were declared by legislation to be crimes and felonies for whom benefit of clergy should no longer be available. Such parliamentary activity marked the transition to a situation, in which for males no longer the clerical status of the offender, but the seriousness of the crime de facto became the criterion for the granting of clergy.(9)

In principal, crimes committed on the Western Circuit during the period 1670-1730 can be divided up into three categories:

1)crimes against the private person

2)crimes against the state

3)crimes against god and nature



Crimes against the private person

Crimes against the person could either be violent or non violent in nature. Basically, we can distinguish between three sorts of crimes against private persons:

1)violent crime against a person

2)destructive crime against a person`s property

3)non-destructive crime against a person`s property

Pretended or real violence against the person took, as far as non-clergyable offences are concerned, seven forms:

1)homicide

2)witchcraft

3)rape

4)robbery

5)piracy

6)laying in wait and maiming

7)abduction of heiresses

Homicide

The worst of all homicide crimes was petit treason. Petit treason was an aggravated form of murder, as it implied the treasonable killing of a person either by his wife or by his or her servants or, in the case of churchmen, the murdering of a hierarchically superior clergyman by an inferior one . In the case of murder by servants, also a woman could become the victim of petit treason. The idea behind the concept of petit treason was, that women owed their husbands submissive obedience and that servants owed allegiance to their employers. Murdering such a husband or employer was consequently considered a small form of treason and not just simple murder. Convicted females therefore were to be burnt alive, while male petit traitors were merely hanged.(10) As children also were considered to owe allegiance and submission to their parents, it was sometimes attempted to get parricides convicted for petit treason, too. Such attempts, however, constantly failed, and the charge was reduced by the jury to simple murder. In this case, the murderer, whether male or female, was merely hanged.(11)

The second most serious form of homicide was murder. The concept of murder was more complicated than one would at first glance suppose. By the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, any kind of killing was considered murder if

A)the killing had not happened in course of a duel

B)the killing was neither self-defence nor accident

C)the killing had not occurred as a consequence of physical provokation against the killer.

In the case of killing during a duel, the charge was normally reduced from murder to manslaughter, if the duel had been conducted in a fair manner. Provocation by mere words or gestures was not sufficient to reduce the murder charge to manslaughter. A person provoked by verbal insults could therefore not claim, that by these insults he had been so much emotionally aroused that his killing amounted merely to manslaughter and not to murder. Only if he had been physically provoked as, for example, by beating, he could successfully hope to establish such a claim. The only major exception to this rule was provocation through adultery. A man killing his rival after finding his wife in this rival`s arms had an excellent chance of being convicted for manslaughter only, as the challenge to his honour was simply considered too great to treat him as a normal murderer.(12)

Self- defense, although by no means comparable to murder or manslaughter, did not completely exculpate the killer, but -as Blackstone reminds us- imposed a minimum of legal guilt on the offender. He, therefore, would at least face forfeiture of property, but that was generally evaded by a royal pardon on this issue. The same was true with regard to death by accident. In cases where the killer had shown an extreme and extraordinary measure of neglect or had been lacking moderation, he or she could nevertheless be convicted for murder and not only for accident. Blackstone quotes in this context a bricklayer whose stone fell through extreme negligence from the roof of a house and killed somebody else. Parents and employers killing their children or servants through excessive corporal punishment also were to be punished for murder despite the fact, that the killing was by no means intended.(13)

These legal niceties set aside, our understanding of murder also becomes complicated in so far, as crimes as infanticide and even witchcraft could be subsumed under the heading murder. Infanticide posed a particular problem in this context. De jure, it was until the nineteen century nothing else than a form of murder and by no means a separate crime. Contemporaries, nevertheless, made an intellectual distinction between normal murder and the killing of a just born child, and this, as we will see later, at least increased the inclination of the monarch to grant pardons. A statute of 1623 furthermore put the secret burial of still-born bastard children on the same footing as murder, if the mother of such children failed to prove by witnesses that the child, instead of being killed by herself, had already been dead on birth.(14) Witchcraft, too, was sometimes indicted as murder, if a person had allegedly been killed by „bewitching“. Within the framework of this study, however, such cases will be merely treated as normal witchcraft. Further complication was added to the whole matter by the fact, that one form of mere manslaughter, manslaughter by stabbing, was made a capital crime without benefit of clergy by legislation of the year 1604. The background to this legislation probably was, that although official legal opinion only accepted physical provocation as reason for reducing a murder charge to manslaughter, at this time many juries still were prepared to accept non-physical emotional provocation by words and gestures, too. By declaring manslaughter by stabbing -fire arms were somewhat rare at this time- a non-clergyable offence, Crown and Parliament overcame this problem. After all, it made no difference whether someone was to hang for non-clergyable manslaughter by stabbing or non-clergyable murder.(15)

For our period under consideration, this statute had lost much of its significance. Two factors had contributed to this decline. First of all, the doctrine that only physical provocation could reduce murder to manslaughter was now also universally accepted by juries. Secondly, a late 1690s Court ruling at the Old Bailey in London somewhat daringly had stipulated, that betrayed husbands who in the heat of passion had killed the adulterer by stabbing would also not fall under the stabbing act, but only be burnt in the hand as simple man-slaughterers.

In other words, for outmanoeuvring recalcitrant juries, the stabbing act was no longer necessary, while some forms of manslaughter, which implied stabbing the victim, were not punished by application of the stabbing act, but considered simple clergyable manslaughter.(16)

Actually committed homicide aside, the so called Waltham Black Act of 1722 prescribed, that attempted murder with firearms should be a non-clergyable offence, no matter whether the attempt succeeded or not. All other forms of attempted but failed murder remained mere trespass and therefore were not punished capitally.(17)

Witchcraft

Witchcraft was a non-clergyable felony, that admittedly was not only directed against persons, but also against the animal property of persons. Mainly, however, indictments for witchcraft on the Western Circuit implied doing harm to the body of others below the level of killing. Convicted witches were to be burnt alive according to sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries` legislation.(18)

Rape

Rape was a non-clergyable crime, mainly - but not exclusively- directed against women. In a very small number of cases, it could also happen, that a homosexual raped another man, although most of such cases normally would be indicted as sodomy. For rape to have been committed, the male phallus had to have been introduced into the female vagina or, in the case of homosexual rape, into the victim`s anus. Without penetration, unconsented intercourse with a woman or men amounted only to sexual assault and therefore trespass. Trespass was only punished by standing in the pillory. If a man had consensual sex with a girl below the age of ten and this sex had implied penetration, the man was nevertheless convicted for a kind of statutory rape, as the woman had been below the age of consent.(19)

Robbery

Robbery was extracting money or goods by force or coercion. Till 1691, robbery committed neither on or near the highway had still been clergyable. However, legislation of the year 1691 declared all kind of robbery - no matter where committed and no matter to what value- to be felony without benefit of clergy.(20)

Attempted but failed robbery in principal was only trespass and not felony. However, the already mentioned Waltham Black Act of 1722 had included a clause which made the mere presence on the highway in disguised appearance and with offensive weapons a capital crime without benefit of clergy. So if , as was probably the rule, a person desirous to rob on the highway disguised himself and appeared with an offensive weapon as a sword, lance or pistol on the highway , he even was then to hang if his robbery attempt failed. In practise, therefore, after 1722 even most failed robberies on the highways, at least if indicted and proved, were to lead to a capital conviction.(21)

Piracy

A special case of robbery was robbery on the seas, or piracy, which -although formally not termed felony- was made by a statute of the year 1536 a capital crime without benefit of clergy. This piece of legislation was supplanted by a statute of the year 1700, which once again affirmed, that piracy was a capital crime without benefit of clergy.(22)

Waylaying and maiming a person in cold blood

The fifth major kind of crime against the person was waylaying a person in cold blood with intent of maiming him and carrying this intent into execution. This stipulation went back to the so called Coventry Act of 1670, when an angered parliament, angry about such an attack on one of his members, declared such kind of waylaying and maiming non-clergyable felony.(23)

Abduction of heiresses

In line with the property conscious instincts of early modern Englishmen, the forceful abduction of heiresses against their will, was a capital offence, too. For wealthy fathers, the prospect that a poor fellow could abduct and marry their daughters was simply unbearable and resulted in capital legislations of this kind.(24)

Destructive Crime against a private person`s property

The concept of destructive crime against a private person`s property implies, that contrary to the felonies mentioned above, these forms of crimes were not directed against the person himself, but directed towards the destruction of his property. Such offences occurred in several shades:

1) nocturnal horse and bull killing

2) arson

3) willfully setting fire to an ship in attempting to cheat the insurance company

4) housebreaking with intent to commit destruction of wool or wool machines

5) breaking the heads of fish ponds/ cutting off from someone` s orchard

Nocturnal horse and bull killing

Horses and bulls belonged to the most valuable goods a farmer could possess, and every damage to this kind of property was considered particular serious. Therefore, the extraordinary hideous act of nocturnal killing of such animals had become a capital crime without benefit of clergy.(25)

Arson

Arson, too, was very much hated, as it implied not only the destruction of dwelling houses but also the danger, that the inhabitants of the house would suffer physical damage or even death. Beginning with legislation in the 1530s, arson had therefore been made a capital crime without benefit of clergy. However, the concept of arson only applied to the burning of someone`s else house, and not to the burning of one`s own house. Even if someone set fire to his own house to cheat the insurance company, he or she therefore only committed misdemeanor punishable by fine or imprisonment.(26)

Willfully setting fire to an ship in attempting to cheat the insurance company

Burning other peoples` houses was not the only kind of arson that carried the mandatory death penalty. Setting fire to a ship or destroying the ship with intent to defraud the insurance company was made from 1717 onwards a capital crime without benefit of clergy. Contrary to the laws for house burning, owners of the ship who destroyed or burnt their vessel or enticed others to do so, were also subject to these capital statutes.(27)

Housebreaking with intent to commit destruction of wool or wool machines

In an age which not only witnessed the industrial revolution but also the social uproars connected with it, the defence of production facilities was accorded special priority. Therefore, in 1725 a statute was passed that made breaking into a house with intent to destroy wool on the loom or to destroy any machine necessary to the production of such wool a felony without benefit of clergy.(28)

Breaking the heads of fish ponds/cutting off from someone`s orchard

Breaking the heads of fish ponds and destroying plants and trees in gardens and orchards, although once only trespass, also were non-clergyable crimes.(29)



Non-destructive property crime

Apart from destructive property crimes as arson and nocturnal bull killing, there existed also a number of property crimes which at least were not primarily aimed at the destruction of property (although by incidence such destruction might nevertheless occur). These kind of crimes may therefore legitimately be termed non-destructive property crime in the sense, that destruction of property was at least not intended. Some of these crimes were punished capitally.

The major forms of such crimes were the following:

1)horse theft

2)burglary

3)housebreaking

4)pick-pocketing/secret stealing from person

5)stealing another person`s property under other circumstances

6)theft from private buildings as shops, warehouses or dwelling houses

7)nocturnal theft from rack

Horse theft

Contrary to more mundane animals as sheep, their somewhat aristocratic aura provided horses with a somewhat higher value. Horse theft was therefore considered a particular heinous crime, and had already been made a non-clergyable felony in 1547, followed by a later statute passed in 1548 and one in 1589 making accomplices of horse thieves felons without title to benefit of clergy.(30)

Burglary

Burglary was housebreaking at night with intent to commit a felony, in general the felony of stealing from this house. Originally, burglary had only been a felony within benefit of clergy, but 18 Elizabeth c.7 had taken away benefit from clergy from those actually committing the crime, while 3 and 4 William and Mary c.9 also deprived the accomplices before the actual act from clergy.(31)

Housebreaking at daytime

Like burglary, housebreaking at daytime had once been a clergyable felony. By the start of our period of examination, the year 1670, however, this was no longer the case. The statute 5 & 6 Edward 6 c.9, s.1 (1552) removed clergy from housebreaking at daylight, if the value of the stolen goods had been at least one shilling, and if at the time of this housebreaking either the owner/dweller of the house, or his wife or one of his children or servants had been in the house. The statute 39 Elizabeth c.15, in turn, removed clergy from housebreaking at daytime for those cases in which no one had been in the house at the time of the housebreaking, but the value of the stolen goods had at least been 5shillings. These two statutes were brought together and consolidated by a single statute of the year 1691. The same statute also turned the breaking of shops and warehouses either belonging to the dwelling house or used in connection with it into a non-clergyable offence, if the value of the stolen goods was at least 5shillings.(32)

Pick-pocketing/secret theft from person

Pick-pocketing or the nearly identical crime secret stealing from person also carried capital punishment without benefit of clergy according to a statute of 1565. This, however, only applied, if the value of the stolen good was 1shilling or above. If below, it was only considered petit larceny and punished by whipping.(33)

Stealing another person`s property under other circumstances

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, apart from stealing from a church or a chapel and apart from pickpocketing/secret stealing from a person, nearly all forms of simple felonious larceny, which means felonious theft implying neither violence nor breaking a building, were clergyable offences. This was even then the case, if the value of the stolen goods was 40shillings and above, although for a limited period in the sixteenth century later modified legislation had turned the last mentioned kind of larceny into felony without benefit of clergy.(34)

Thefts from private buildings

Dissatisfied with the before-mentioned situation, that most forms of simple felonious larceny were clergyable, beginning with the 1690s, Parliament began to pass legislation, that turned thefts from private buildings as dwelling houses, shops or warehouses, under certain circumstances, into non-clergyable felonies.Therefore, thefts from the dwelling house at the value of one shilling or above became by legislation of 1691 non-clergyable felonies, if somebody was in the building and had by the theft been put in fear. Moreover, legislation of the year 1713 mandatorily required the death penalty even for those cases of thefts from house in which nobody had been in the dwelling house, but the value of the stolen goods had been at least 40 shillings. Thefts from warehouses, shops, coach-houses and stables of at least 5shillings value were removed from clergy in 1699.(35)

Nocturnal theft from rack

Nocturnal theft, cutting or taking away of cloth or woolen material from the rack or tenter had been made in 1670 a capital felony without benefit of clergy. The same statute, however, also empowered the judge to offer persons convicted of this crime -after judgement of death had been passed- the possibility to be transported for seven years instead of being executed.(36)

Although all these crimes were considered to be of a very serious nature, still higher in the criminal hierarchy stood those against the state and public order.

Crimes against the state

Crimes against the state fell into six categories:

1)high treason

2)desertion/ wandering illegally around as soldiers and mariners

3)rioting

4)return from transportation

5)theft from royal property

6)wandering around like gypsies

7)emission of forged stamp paper

High treason

Of all these crimes, high treason very naturally tended to threaten the fabric of the state most. High treason basically took three forms:

1)Military insurrection against the state or incitement to such insurrection

2)Behaviour in defiance of the church order

3)Offences against the currency laws of the state

As we have seen before, military insurrection against the state was nothing unknown to our

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 24.06.2013
ISBN: 978-3-7309-3391-6

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