ABSTRACT
The first category of criminal offences — the real crimes, as it were — comprised treasons and felonies, punishable by death. In the lists of triable misbehaviours found in pardons or charges to juries, murder was usually mentioned separately, but it really constituted a felony at common law. Because these capital crimes pose relatively few problems to the historian, they have been taken for well understood, but some real difficulties remain. Treating crime as a social rather than a legal phenomenon further leads the historian to mishandle the problem of enforcement; he can come to see social significance in laws which were applied very haphazardly or even allowed to fall into desuetude. More particularly, it makes impossible a serious study of pardoning, a study which, partly for that reason, no one has yet undertaken for our period; and yet pardoning lies at the heart of the question of enforcement and itself bears heavily upon the question of social attitudes.
