The National Archives (United Kingdom)

Overview

The National Archives is the United Kingdom archival institution that hosted the exhibition Treason: People, Power and Plot and the two-episode document-based tour of British treason history.

Current Profile

The paired episodes present the institution as a public-history setting where legal change becomes visible through material records. The medieval and Tudor half uses Parliament rolls, statute rolls, attainders, indictments, and execution records to connect the Treason Act 1351/1352 with changing prosecution and punishment. The modern half adds trial volumes, declarations, annotated prosecution papers, proclamations, and court-martial records, allowing visitors to compare how governments documented and enforced changing claims of allegiance.

Key Characteristics

• Custodian and exhibitor of British state and legal records.
• Host of Treason: People, Power and Plot.
• Connects medieval legislation, Tudor expansion, regime conflict, republican revolution, and modern wartime allegiance through archival objects.
• Makes the production, survival, and later reuse of official records part of historical interpretation.

Evidence

• Exhibition scope: 249. Treason in Modern Britain (Part 2) says the exhibition follows treason records from the 1352 act to modern cases.
• Medieval and Tudor foundation: 248. Medieval Treason (Part 1) uses the statute rolls, attainders, Anne Boleyn records, poisoning legislation, and the Monteagle letter to reconstruct changes before the modern sequence.
• Archival method: 249. Treason in Modern Britain (Part 2) examines retrospective trial compilations, Restoration papers, annotated prosecution material, proclamations, and courts-martial.
• Public-history role: 248. Medieval Treason (Part 1) and 249. Treason in Modern Britain (Part 2) were recorded at the exhibition with institutional guides Euan Roger and Neil Johnston.

Qualifications

This page represents the institution only through one temporary exhibition and two podcast recordings. It is not a general institutional history, collections guide, or statement of current exhibition availability. The episodes’ readings of individual records remain source-scoped rather than complete archival descriptions.

What Changed

• Extended the exhibition profile backward from the modern sequence to its medieval and Tudor statute, procedure, and punishment foundation.

Relationships

• Neil Johnston - guide who interprets the exhibition’s records in the episode.
• Euan Roger - guide to the medieval and Tudor records in the first episode.
• The Rest Is History - podcast recorded at the exhibition.
• Treason as Sovereignty Contest - cross-period pattern made visible by the displayed records.
• Treason Act 1351/1352 - displayed statutory anchor for the exhibition’s long chronology.
• Exemplary Treason Punishment - framework supported by records of trial, punishment, bodily display, and later political reuse.