— Also termed death penalty. See DEATH PENALTY.
“At Common Law capital punishment was imposed for a few very serious offences such as treason, murder, rape, and burning a dwelling-house. Even as late as 1688, despite the exceptionally rigorous laws which had been enacted during the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts, no more than about fifty offences carried the death penalty. In the eighteenth century, however, their number began spectacularly to increase…. Broadly speaking, in the course of the hundred and sixty years from the Restoration to the death of George III, the number of capital offences had increased by about one hundred and ninety.” 1 Leon Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law§ 1, at 4 (1948).
