The 12-pence grand-larceny threshold predates the Bloody Code — it is Athelstan's common-law line, not an 18th-century capital statute

William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (Book IV, ch. 17) dates the twelvepence grand-larceny threshold — the value above which theft became a capital offense at common law — to the reign of King Athelstan, roughly eight hundred years before Blackstone wrote: the sum "was the standard in the time of king Athelstan, eight hundred years ago." This is the ancient common-law baseline, not one of the parliamentary additions counted in the Bloody Code's statutory growth. Leon Radzinowicz's count of capital offences climbing from about fifty in 1688 to roughly 200-223 by 1819-1828 tallies eighteenth-century additions to the law; the tenth-century grand/petty larceny divide Blackstone describes here is a separate, older layer entirely.

The two figures get conflated in secondary retellings — including, until this correction, the vault's own note on the subject — because both make property theft potentially capital and both surface in the same paragraphs of scholarship on the period. But they are historically distinct: one an ancient baseline predating the Bloody Code by roughly eight centuries, the other a wave of eighteenth-century parliamentary additions layered on top of and around it. The distinction matters for claim-georgian-juries-undervalued-stolen-goods-to-avoid-the-death-penalty, where Blackstone's own "pious perjury" example is jurors undervaluing goods specifically against this twelvepence line — not against any of the newer statutory thresholds, such as the 40-shilling dwelling-house theft threshold documented there.