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
High treason in the United Kingdom with a strict requirement for a minimum of two witnesses to the crime. In 1832 the death penalty was abolished for treason by forging seals and the Royal sign manual. In 1870, attainder was abolished. In the same year in England, and in 1949 in Scotland, posthumous drawing and quartering was abolished, and so the sole punishment was hanging. Beheading was abolished in 1973, by which time it had long been obsolete. By 1965, capital punishment had been abolished for almost all crimes, but was still mandatory (unless the offender was pardoned or the sentence commuted) for high treason until