Treason and Lords of Justiciary and counterfeiting the Great Seal of Scotland remain treason under sections 11 and 12 of the Treason Act 1708 respectively. Treason is a reserved matter about which the Scottish Parliament is prohibited from legislating. Two acts of the former Parliament of Ireland passed in 1537 and 1542 create further treasons which apply in Northern Ireland. The penalty for treason was changed from death to a maximum of imprisonment for life in 1998 under the Crime And Disorder Act. Before 1998, the death penalty was mandatory, subject to the royal prerogative of mercy. Since the abolition of
High treason in the United Kingdom sentence of life imprisonment instead of death (but today, due to the abolition of the death penalty, the maximum penalty both for high treason and treason felony would be the same—life imprisonment). Under the traditional categorisation of offences into treason, felonies, and misdemeanours, treason felony was merely another form of felony. Several categories of treason which had been introduced by the Sedition Act 1661 were reduced to felonies. While the common law offences of misprision and compounding were abolished in respect of felonies (including treason felony) by the Criminal Law Act 1967, which abolished the distinction between misdemeanour and felony,