In English
criminal law
Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It prescribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and moral welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal law i ...
, attainder or attinctura was the metaphorical "stain" or "corruption of blood" which arose from being condemned for a serious
capital crime (
felony
A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. The term "felony" originated from English common law (from the French medieval word "félonie") to describe an offense that resu ...
or
treason
Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...
). It entailed losing not only one's life, property and
hereditary titles
Hereditary titles, in a general sense, are nobility titles, positions or styles that are hereditary and thus tend or are bound to remain in particular families.
Though both monarchs and nobles usually inherit their titles, the mechanisms often di ...
, but typically also the right to pass them on to one's
heirs
Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Officia ...
. Both men and women condemned of capital crimes could be attainted.
Attainder by confession resulted from a guilty plea at the bar before judges or before the
coroner
A coroner is a government or judicial official who is empowered to conduct or order an inquest into Manner of death, the manner or cause of death, and to investigate or confirm the identity of an unknown person who has been found dead within th ...
in
sanctuary
A sanctuary, in its original meaning, is a sacred place, such as a shrine. By the use of such places as a haven, by extension the term has come to be used for any place of safety. This secondary use can be categorized into human sanctuary, a sa ...
. Attainder by verdict resulted from
conviction by jury. Attainder by process resulted from a legislative act
outlaw
An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so that anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them ...
ing a fugitive. The last form is obsolete in England (and prohibited in the United States), and the other forms have been
abolished.
Middle Ages and Renaissance
![Richard of York Talbot Shrewsbury Book](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Richard_of_York_Talbot_Shrewsbury_Book.jpeg)
Medieval and Renaissance English monarchs used acts of attainder to deprive nobles of their lands and often their lives. Once attainted, the descendants of the noble could no longer inherit his lands or income. Attainder essentially amounted to the legal death of the attainted's family.
Monarchs typically used attainders against political enemies and those who posed potential threats to the king's position and security. The attainder eliminated any advantage the noble would have in a court of law; nobles were exempt from many of the techniques used to try
commoners
A commoner, also known as the ''common man'', ''commoners'', the ''common people'' or the ''masses'', was in earlier use an ordinary person in a community or nation who did not have any significant social status, especially a member of neither ...
, including
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...
. Likewise, in many cases of attainder, the king could coerce the parliament into approving the attainder and there would be a lower or non-existent burden of proof (evidence) than there would be in court.
Prior to the Tudors, most rulers reversed their attainders in return for promises of loyalty. For example,
Henry VI reversed all 21 attainders,
Edward IV 86 of 120, and
Richard III
Richard III (2 October 145222 August 1485) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat and death at the Battl ...
99 of 100.
However, this changed with
Henry VII, as described below.
Regnants who used attainder include:
*
Margaret of Anjou: her attainder of
Richard of York
Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York (21 September 1411 – 30 December 1460), also named Richard Plantagenet, was a leading English magnate and claimant to the throne during the Wars of the Roses. He was a member of the ruling House of Planta ...
led him to invade England and attempt to seize the throne after the
Battle of Northampton, which led to the penultimate phases of the
War of the Roses
The Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), known at the time and for more than a century after as the Civil Wars, were a series of civil wars fought over control of the throne of England, English throne in the mid-to-late fifteenth century. These w ...
.
*
Edward IV: used attainder after killing his brother,
George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence
George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence (21 October 144918 February 1478), was the 6th son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and the brother of English kings Edward IV and Richard III. He played an important role in the ...
for high treason. This allowed
Richard III of England to rightfully inherit the throne when he claimed that Edward IV's sons were
illegitimate
Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, ''illegitimacy'', also known as '' ...
.
*
Henry VII: initially attainted men after he ascended the throne.
He used the threat of attainder as a means to keep the few nobles who survived the
War of the Roses
The Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), known at the time and for more than a century after as the Civil Wars, were a series of civil wars fought over control of the throne of England, English throne in the mid-to-late fifteenth century. These w ...
in line. Often, however, he would penalize them with exorbitant fees and fines, or force them to have bonds which would be forfeit unless they exhibited good behaviour (his goal was to reduce the number of nobles with private armies of
retainers
Retainer may refer to:
* Retainer (orthodontics), devices for teeth
* RFA ''Retainer'' (A329), a ship
* Retainers in early China, a social group in early China
Employment
* Retainer agreement, a contract in which an employer pays in advance for w ...
.) Henry VII attainted 138 men, of whom he reversed only 46 attainders, and some of these were conditional.
*
Henry VIII: compelled parliament to attaint many nobles during his lifetime, including magnates with major land holdings, and any magnates whom he came to mistrust. Examples include:
**
Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn (; 1501 or 1507 – 19 May 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536, as the second wife of King Henry VIII. The circumstances of her marriage and of her execution by beheading for treason and other charges made her a key ...
: Before her execution, she was stripped of her title, and her marriage was
annulled
Annulment is a legal procedure within secular and religious legal systems for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning almost ...
.
**
Catherine Howard
Catherine Howard ( – 13 February 1542), also spelled Katheryn Howard, was Queen of England from 1540 until 1542 as the fifth wife of Henry VIII. She was the daughter of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper, a cousin to Anne Boleyn (the se ...
: Henry VIII had an Act of Attainder passed against Catherine Howard, which made it
treason
Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...
for a woman with an
unchaste
Chastity, also known as purity, is a virtue related to temperance. Someone who is ''chaste'' refrains either from sexual activity considered immoral or any sexual activity, according to their state of life. In some contexts, for example when mak ...
reputation to marry the king.
**
Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, one of the wealthiest magnates in England, whom Henry had executed on flimsy charges in 1521.
**
Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury
Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury (14 August 1473 – 27 May 1541), also called Margaret Pole, as a result of her marriage to Sir Richard Pole, was the only surviving daughter of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, a brother ...
: One of the last surviving noble Plantagenets of senior line.
**
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/1517 – 19 January 1547), Order of the Garter, KG, was an English nobleman, politician and poet. He was one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry and was the last known person executed at the instan ...
: The poet son of
Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk
Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, (1473 – 25 August 1554) was a prominent English politician and nobleman of the Tudor era. He was an uncle of two of the wives of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both of whom were beheade ...
.
**
Thomas Cromwell
Thomas Cromwell (; 1485 – 28 July 1540), briefly Earl of Essex, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false charge ...
: former Principal Secretary to Henry VIII, who was arrested at a
Privy Council
A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a state, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the mon ...
meeting in 1540, and charged with
treason
Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...
, executed on the grounds of an Attainder
*
Charles I Charles I may refer to:
Kings and emperors
* Charlemagne (742–814), numbered Charles I in the lists of Holy Roman Emperors and French kings
* Charles I of Anjou (1226–1285), also king of Albania, Jerusalem, Naples and Sicily
* Charles I of ...
: subsequent to the failed
impeachment
Impeachment is the process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct. It may be understood as a unique process involving both political and legal elements.
In ...
of his former
Lord Deputy of Ireland,
Sir Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, was attainted during the political crisis of 1640 -1641. The Bill of Attainder, having passed the depleted
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
and
House of Lords
The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...
, was enacted by
Charles I Charles I may refer to:
Kings and emperors
* Charlemagne (742–814), numbered Charles I in the lists of Holy Roman Emperors and French kings
* Charles I of Anjou (1226–1285), also king of Albania, Jerusalem, Naples and Sicily
* Charles I of ...
as a concession to his political opponents. During his reign, the
Long Parliament
The Long Parliament was an English Parliament which lasted from 1640 until 1660. It followed the fiasco of the Short Parliament, which had convened for only three weeks during the spring of 1640 after an 11-year parliamentary absence. In Septem ...
of 1641 passed an Act of Attainder against
William Laud
William Laud (; 7 October 1573 – 10 January 1645) was a bishop in the Church of England. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Charles I in 1633, Laud was a key advocate of Charles I's religious reforms, he was arrested by Parliament in 1640 ...
,
Archbishop of Canterbury
The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justi ...
who was
beheaded
Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the ...
in 1645.
*
Charles II: Although deceased by the time of the
Restoration
Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to:
* Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage
** Audio restoration
** Film restoration
** Image restoration
** Textile restoration
* Restoration ecology
...
, the
regicides
Regicide is the purposeful killing of a monarch or sovereign of a polity and is often associated with the usurpation of power. A regicide can also be the person responsible for the killing. The word comes from the Latin roots of ''regis'' ...
John Bradshaw,
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English politician and military officer who is widely regarded as one of the most important statesmen in English history. He came to prominence during the 1639 to 1651 Wars of the Three Ki ...
,
Henry Ireton and
Thomas Pride
Colonel Thomas Pride (died 23 October 1658) was a Parliamentarian commander during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, best known as one of the regicides of Charles I and as the instigator of Pride's Purge.
Personal details
Thomas Pride was bor ...
were served with a Bill of Attainder on 15 May 1660 backdated to 1 January 1649 (
NS).
*
William III:
**
James, III and VIII, the Old Pretender, 1702
*
George II George II or 2 may refer to:
People
* George II of Antioch (seventh century AD)
* George II of Armenia (late ninth century)
* George II of Abkhazia (916–960)
* Patriarch George II of Alexandria (1021–1051)
* George II of Georgia (1072–1089) ...
, following the
Jacobite rising of 1745
The Jacobite rising of 1745, also known as the Forty-five Rebellion or simply the '45 ( gd, Bliadhna Theàrlaich, , ), was an attempt by Charles Edward Stuart to regain the Monarchy of Great Britain, British throne for his father, James Franci ...
:
**
Attainder of Earl of Kellie and Others Act 1745
Once attainted, nobles were considered commoners, and as such, could be subjected to the same treatments, including
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...
and methods of
execution
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...
. For example, commoners could be
burned at the stake
Death by burning (also known as immolation) is an execution and murder method involving combustion or exposure to extreme heat. It has a long history as a form of public capital punishment, and many societies have employed it as a punishment f ...
, whereas nobles could not.
Often, nobles would refer to the act of being attainted (and then executed) as the person's "destruction".
Passage in Parliament
In the
Westminster system, a
bill of attainder
A bill of attainder (also known as an act of attainder or writ of attainder or bill of penalties) is an act of a legislature declaring a person, or a group of people, guilty of some crime, and punishing them, often without a trial. As with attai ...
is a bill passed by
Parliament
In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
to attaint persons who are accused of
high treason
Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...
, or, in rare cases, a lesser crime. A person attainted need not have been convicted of treason in a court of law; in fact, the attainder process is a method of declaring a person a
fugitive
A fugitive (or runaway) is a person who is fleeing from custody, whether it be from jail, a government arrest, government or non-government questioning, vigilante violence, or outraged private individuals. A fugitive from justice, also known ...
.
A rumour circulated that a bill of attainder against
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
occurred in 1774 because of his authorship of ''
A Summary View of the Rights of British America''.
A bill of attainder was last passed in Britain in 1798, against
Lord Edward FitzGerald
Lord Edward FitzGerald (15 October 1763 – 4 June 1798) was an Irish aristocrat who abandoned his prospects as a distinguished veteran of British service in the American War of Independence, and as an Irish Parliamentarian, to embrace the caus ...
. Attainders by confession, verdict and process were abolished in the United Kingdom by the
Forfeiture Act 1870
The Forfeiture Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict c 23) is a British Act of Parliament that abolished the automatic forfeiture of goods and land as a punishment for treason and felony. It does not apply to Scotland, which did not fully abolish forfeiture u ...
(33 & 34 Vict., c.23).
Section 9 of
Article One of the United States Constitution
Article One of the United States Constitution establishes the legislative branch of the Federal government of the United States, federal government, the United States Congress. Under Article One, Congress is a bicameral legislature consisting of ...
provides that no bill of attainder or
ex post facto law
An ''ex post facto'' law (from ) is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law. In criminal law, it may Criminalization, crim ...
shall be passed by Congress. The following section forbids states from passing them.
Corruption of blood
Corruption of blood is one of the consequences of attainder. The descendants of an attainted person could not inherit either from the attainted person (whose property had been forfeited by the attainder) or through their other relatives from him. For example, if a person executed for a crime leaves innocent children, the property of the criminal is forfeited to the crown and will not pass to the children. When the criminal's innocent father outlives his son, the property inherited by the father from the criminal cannot be inherited by the criminal's children either as it will be distributed among other family members.
The
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven ar ...
prohibits corruption of blood as a punishment for treason,
[U.S. Constitution, Art. III, Sec. 3, ¶ 2.] (specifically, "no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted")
and when
Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
passed
the first federal crime bill in 1790, it prohibited corruption of blood as a punishment for any federal crime. In
England and Wales
England and Wales () is one of the three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. The substantive law of the jurisdiction is Eng ...
, corruption of blood was abolished by the
Corruption of Blood Act 1814
The Corruption of Blood Act 1814 (54 Geo. 3 c. 145) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which abolished corruption of blood for all crimes except high treason, petty treason and murder. Corruption of ...
.
Examples
*
Earl of Strafford
Earl of Strafford is a title that has been created three times in English and British history.
The first creation was in the Peerage of England in January 1640 for Thomas Wentworth, the close advisor of King Charles I. He had already succe ...
*
John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln
John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln (c. 1460 – 16 June 1487) was a leading figure in the Yorkist aristocracy during the Wars of the Roses.
After the death of his uncle Richard III, de la Pole was reconciled with the new Tudor regime, but two year ...
*
Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven
Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven (1593 – 14 May 1631; also spelled ''Mervin, Touchet''), was an English nobleman who was convicted of rape and sodomy and subsequently executed. He is the only member of parliament to be executed for a ...
*
Parker Wickham
*
Richard FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel
*
Thomas Cromwell
Thomas Cromwell (; 1485 – 28 July 1540), briefly Earl of Essex, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false charge ...
*
Earl of Perth
**
Viscount Strathallan {{Use dmy dates, date=November 2019
The title of Lord Maderty was created in 1609 for James Drummond, a younger son of the 2nd Lord Drummond of Cargill. The titles of Viscount Strathallan and Lord Drummond of Cromlix were created in 1686 for Willia ...
References
{{Reflist
Public law
Legal history of England
English legal terminology