Capital punishment in the United Kingdom espionage from "all spies for the enemy" to spies on naval ships or bases. Later, the Armed Forces Act 1981 abolished the death penalty for espionage. (The Official Secrets Act 1911 had created another offence of espionage which carried a maximum sentence of fourteen years.) Beheading was abolished as a method of execution for treason in 1973. Hanging, however, remained available until 1998 when, under a House of Lords amendment to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, proposed by Lord Archer of Sandwell, the death penalty was abolished for treason and piracy with violence, replacing it with a discretionary maximum
Treason Act 1814 at the discretion of the court, up to life imprisonment. The last execution under the Act was of William Joyce in 1946, for assisting the Third Reich during the Second World War. Note that hanging, drawing and quartering was never the penalty for counterfeiting or clipping coins (which was high treason until 1832). The penalty for this kind of high treason was the same as for petty treason, which for men was to be drawn to the place of execution and hanged, and for women was burning without being drawn. The death penalty for forging seals and the Royal sign-manual,