RECENTLY I was asked why so many criminals and rogues have become heroes. It is not an easy question to answer but I have heard it said that such villains often make superb soldiers because they are not afraid of other people, however violent, and in addition they have no concept of dying. In other words they are fearless, and that is often the prerequisite of a hero or heroine.

If we consider some of our national heroes, either fictional characters or real people with criminal pasts, we might name Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Dick Turpin, Alfred the Great, King Arthur and even the Great Train Robbers.

Dick Turpin was a real person who has become something of a legendary hero in spite of being a savage and brutal robber and highwayman, whilst Robin Hood, who was probably not a real person but a work of fiction, has become a legend and a hero because he robbed the rich to give to the poor – or so he claimed.

It has been argued that if a person commits a serious crime such as murder or robbery and is then found guilty, that criminal has then voluntarily placed himself or herself beyond the protection of some, if not all, of the law. When this happened in the past, such a criminal was declared an outlaw.

Outlawry has long been part of our criminal history, not only in this country but in many nations overseas.

This form of punishment has a long history and there are references in Anglo-Saxon times to an outlaw being known as a ‘frendlesman’ because his behaviour resulted in the loss of all his friends. He was known variously as “an outlaw against all the people” or “civiliter mortuus” but was not a hero. Declaring a convicted person to be an outlaw was for a long period a very popular form of punishment.

There is a record in 1221 when the justices visited Gloucester Assizes to try 330 cases of homicide.

As punishment, they ordered one mutilation, 14 hangings and over 100 orders for outlawry. We are not told what happened to the other defendants.

Being declared an outlaw was not a mild form of punishment.

It was a severe penalty because it put the criminal beyond the protection of the law and at one stage of our history, an outlaw could be killed by anyone at any time, simply because, in law, he had ceased to exist as a person. His house could be burned and his land ravaged with no hope of reprieve. The title of this punishment was ‘caput gerat lupinium’ that meant “let him be treated as the head of the wolf.”

One dreadful aspect of this penalty was that it affected his wife and family too because his land and chattels could be forfeited to the Crown. He and his family were left with nothing.

Changes were afoot, however, because by the13th century, an outlaw could be killed only if he defended himself or tried to escape.

Even this was considered too tough and so, in time, the life of an outlaw was put in the King’s hands which resulted in a rather strange form of protection.

Anyone who then killed him without reason was liable to a charge of homicide.

It was King Henry III who used outlawry as an easy means of acquiring land. In 1255, he outlawed over seventy murderers and obtained all their property. In 1256, some justices in Northumberland tried 77 suspected murderers of whom 72 were outlawed and in 1279, the same justices tried a further 68 cases of murder.

Sixty-four of the guilty killers were outlawed.

As time passed, it was possible for a repentant outlaw to place himself back within the protection of the law by becoming “in law.”

He had to face a second trial by which he could become a “new” person, but of course, he had already lost all his lands and property with no means of recovering them.

In later years, his goods and chattels were recoverable, but not his land.

Despite its ancient origins, outlawry for civil proceedings was not abolished in this country until 1870, but it remained a possible penalty for criminal offences.

That situation remained until the passing of the Administration of Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act of 1938 when outlawry was finally abolished within English criminal proceedings. As late as 1970, a superior court judge in Fayetteville, Carolina, outlawed three prisoners who had escaped from Cumberland County Gaol.

In some countries, the hunting of outlaws created bounty hunters, people who would hunt down a wanted criminal to obtain a reward.

Whether or not there is a need for outlawry in our modern society, it must not produce folk heroes!