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Updated: May 4, 2025
The law remained on the statute-book only six years. In the early part of the reign of Edward VI, when the protector Somerset was in power, a policy of great leniency in respect to felonies was proposed. In December of 1547 a bill was introduced into Parliament to repeal certain statutes for treason and felony.
A fundamental condition was attached to the admission, declaring "that the Constitution of Arkansas shall never be so amended or changed as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the United States of the right to vote, who are entitled to vote by the Constitution herein recognized, except as a punishment for such crimes as are now felonies at common law, whereof they shall have been duly convicted under laws equally applicable to all the inhabitants of said State."
The fine arts were placed under absurd restraints. Vices which had never before been even misdemeanours were made capital felonies. It was solemnly resolved by Parliament "that no person shall be employed but such as the House shall be satisfied of his real godliness." The pious assembly had a Bible lying on the table for reference.
The prisoner, therefore, although few felonies remain still capital, is nevertheless still allowed to plead over as before. In misdemeanours, however, which are never capital, and in which, therefore, no such principle could ever have applied, the judgment on these pleas appears to follow the analogy of a civil action.
In the next reign Walter, archbishop of Dublin, is pardoned all murders, rapes, treasons, felonies, misprisons, riots, routs, extortions, &c. Has not this the appearance of some curiosity in the king on the subject of the princes, of whose fate he was uncertain? Richard's conduct in a parallel case is a strong presumption that this barbarity was falsely laid to his charge.
See Sir J. F. Stephen's History of the Criminal Law , i. 470. He quotes Blackstone's famous statement that there were 160 felonies without benefit of clergy, and shows that this gives a very uncertain measure of the severity of the law.
A pardon of all murders, pardons petty treason. 1 Hale P. C. 378. See 2 H. P. C. 340, 342. It is also included in the word 'felony, so that a pardon of all felonies, pardons petty treason.
One burglary and one felony alone were reported throughout the island population of 37,000 souls in the month of July; and no burglary, and three felonies, were last month reported.
A fairly typical record in the premises is that of Baldwin County, Georgia, in which the following trials of slaves for felonies between 1812 and 1832 are recounted: in 1812 Major was convicted of rape and sentenced to be hanged.
In high treason they sentence the criminal to be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution, there to be hanged and quartered. In murder, robbery, and other felonies, which are excluded the benefit of the clergy, the criminal is sentenced to be hanged till he is dead.
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