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 Women were excluded from this type of punishment and instead were drawn and then burned at the stake, until this was replaced with hanging by the Treason Act 1790 and the Treason by Women Act (Ireland) 1796. The penalty for high treason by counterfeiting or clipping coins was the same as the penalty for petty treason (which for men was drawing and hanging without the torture and quartering, and for women was burning or hanging.) Individuals of noble birth were not subjected to either form of torture, but merely beheaded. Even commoners' sentences were sometimes commuted to beheading—a sentence not