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Alan Wharam. Treason: Famous English Treason Trials. Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2005. xviii + 263 pp. +47 illus. paper £8.99.
Alan Wharam's books are excellent sources on the history of English law Even the appendices to his books are fascinating reading. For Treason: Famous English Treason Trials, originally published in 1997 and now appearing as a revised edition in paperback, Wharam culled through transcripts of court proceedings to offer accounts ranging from the 1601 treason trial of the Earl of Essex to the 1916 trial of Sir Roger Casement and the 1945 trial of William Joyce, "Lord Haw-Haw." In doing so, Wharam demonstrates the way in which treason was addressed in the English courts and explains the logic behind the laws applied to these crimes. As with his work, Murder in the Tower: And Other Tales from the State Trials (2001), Wharam provides dear, common-sense explanations to the reader, thus elucidating the workings of English jurisprudence while offering the next-best thing to a seat in these historical courtrooms. The thirty-three volumes of Howell's State Trials (1816-1826) provided much of the material for Wharam's current work, as well as the four volumes of Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-17769); Sir Edward Coke's four-volume Institutes (1628-1644); and Sir Michael Frost's Discourse on Treason: Crown Cases (1762).
As an infringement of the duty a subject owes to his monarch, High Treason was punishable...