| Summary: | After some nobles and other fighting men surrendered Rochester castle to King John in 1215, John wanted to hang the nobles but refrained from doing so on the advice of one of his military captains. Would hanging the nobles for making war on the king have been lawful? This question about the law of treason has provoked inconclusive debate among historians who have sought to determine whether, in this period, making war against the English king was legally classified as lèse-majesté (crimen laesae majestatis), proditio or infidelitas. This article, however, asks whether the nobles whom John wanted to hang were guilty of traïson, as this vernacular term was used in the History of William Marshal (c. 1230). On this basis, the paper concludes that in all probability, the nobles who held Rochester against the king would not have been condemned as traitors, at least by their aristocratic peers.
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