The Treason Act 1397 (21 Ric.2 c. 12) was an Act of the Parliament of England. It was supplemented by three other Acts (21 Ric.2 c. 3, 4 and 20). The four Acts together dealt with high treason.
The main Act (c.12) was a lengthy document setting out several new crimes which were to be treason. Another Act (c.3) made it treason to "compasseth or purpose the death of the king, or to depose him," or to make war against him in his realm, which went much further than the Treason Act 1351,[1] in that it did not require an overt act to have been committed to prove the offence. A third Act (c.4) also made it treason "to attempt to repeal any Judgments made by Parliament against certain traitors" (i.e. acts of attainder). A fourth Act (c.20) further made it treason to "pursue to repeal any of these statutes."
This legislation was passed during the final years of Richard II's turbulent reign. The new treasons created by Richard were abolished by another Act passed in the first year of his successor, Henry IV (1399), which returned the law of treason to what it had been under the Treason Act 1351.[2] This Act explained the reason for the repeal:
| “ | ...Whereas in the said Parliament holden the said one and twentieth Year of the said late King Richard, divers Pains of Treason were ordained by Statute, in as much that there was no Man which did know how he ought to behave himself, to do, speak, or say, for Doubt of such Pains, It is accorded and assented by the King, the Lords and Commons aforesaid, that in no Time to come any Treason be judged otherwise, than it was ordained by the Statute of his noble Grandfather King Edward the Third, whom God assoil. | ” |
The jurist William Blackstone wrote in his Commentaries on the Laws of England:
| “ | The most arbitrary and absurd [treason] of all which was by the statute 21 Ric. II. c. 3. which made the bare purpose and intent of killing or deposing the king, without any overt act to demonstrate it, high treason. And yet so little effect have over-violent laws to prevent any crime, that within two years afterwards this very prince was both deposed and murdered.[3] | ” |
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