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"I said of murder, but it's really petty treason, and that's a charge I had never heard of. It comes from English law. Petty treason involved killing a person to whom one owed obedience and allegiance. So a wife killing her husband or a servant killing his master. The law treated these crimes far more harshly than ordinary murder because they were seen as an assault on the social order. Murphy was sentenced to hang, but Catherine received the rare and cruel sentence of burning to death."
