page_title: Outlaw
section_title: Criminal
hierarchical_section_title: Outlaw / Legal history / England / Criminal
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby (1573-1644), in robes as Knight of the Garter
context_page_description: In historical legal systems, an outlaw is one declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so that anyone is legally empowered to persecute or kill them. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system. In early Germanic law, the death penalty is conspicuously absent, and outlawing is the most extreme punishment, presumably amounting to a death sentence in practice. The concept is known from Roman law, as the status of homo sacer, and persisted throughout the Middle Ages.
  In the common law of England, a "Writ of Outlawry" made the pronouncement Caput lupinum with respect to its subject, using "head" to refer to the entire person and equating that person with a wolf in the eyes of the law: not only was the subject deprived of all legal rights of the law being outside the "law", but others could kill him on sight as if he were a wolf or other wild animal. Women were declared "waived" rather than outlawed but it was effectively the same punishment.
context_section_description: The term outlawry referred to the formal procedure of declaring someone an outlaw, i.e. putting him outside the sphere of legal protection. In the common law of England, a judgment of (criminal) outlawry was one of the harshest penalties in the legal system, since the outlaw could not use the legal system for protection, e.g. from mob justice. To be declared an outlaw was to suffer a form of civil or social death. The outlaw was debarred from all civilized society. No one was allowed to give him food, shelter, or any other sort of support—to do so was to commit the crime of aiding and abetting, and to be in danger of the ban oneself. A more recent concept of "wanted dead or alive" is similar, but implies that a trial is desired (namely if the wanted person is returned alive), whereas outlawry precludes a trial.
  An outlaw might be killed with impunity; and it was not only lawful but meritorious to kill a thief fleeing from justice—to do so was not murder. A man who slew a thief was expected to declare the fact without delay, otherwise the dead man's kindred might clear his name by their oath and require the slayer to pay weregild as for a true man.
  By the rules of common law, a criminal outlaw did not need to be guilty of the crime for which he was an outlaw. If a man was accused of a treason or felony but failed to appear in court to defend himself, he was deemed to be convicted of the said offence. If he was accused of a misdemeanour, then he was guilty of a serious contempt of court which was itself a capital crime.
  In the context of criminal law, outlawry faded out, not so much by legal changes as by the greater population density of the country, which made it harder for wanted fugitives to evade capture; and by the adoption of international extradition pacts. It was obsolete by the time the offence was abolished in 1938. Outlawry was, however, a living practice as of 1855: in 1841, William John Bankes, who had previously been an MP for several different constituencies between 1810 and 1835, was outlawed by due process of law for absenting himself from trial for homosexuality, and died in 1855 in Venice as an outlaw.
caption: Henry Danvers, Earl of Danby, was outlawed in 1597 by a coroner's court for the murder of Henry Long. He went to France and joined the French army; two years later he was pardoned by Queen Elizabeth and returned to England.
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