‘Another Sort of Treason’: the troubled home of husband-killing in late-medieval common law

Medieval English law set the killing of a husband by his wife apart from most other homicides, because it was perceived as particularly serious and disruptive of the social order. Husband-killers were burned, not hanged, as a spectacular demonstration of condemnation and concern for this social problem. As this chapter shows, however, husband-killing also presented legal problems. There was a doctrinal puzzle in terms of the unclear extent to which this offence should be assimilated to treason, as opposed to homicide: the later distinction between ‘high treason’ against the king, crown or government, and ‘petty treason’ against a domestic superior did not come into being as neatly as sometimes assumed. There were also struggles on a procedural level, as attempts were made to fit husband-killing into common law modes of prosecution, prompting some creative strategies on the part of those seeking to secure a conviction.