---
title: "grand larceny"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "term"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "grand larceny"
aliases: ["grand larciny"]
first_seen: "2026-07-11T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Bloody Code","William Blackstone","petty larceny","pious perjury","capital punishment (Georgian England)"]
---


The English common-law category for theft above a set value threshold — twelvepence, per Blackstone, who dates the line to the reign of King Athelstan (10th century) rather than to any eighteenth-century statute. Grand larceny was punishable by death at common law, independent of the wave of Bloody Code statutes that later stacked additional capital property offenses on top of it (see [[claim-12-pence-grand-larceny-threshold-is-common-law-not-a-bloody-code-statute]]). It is also the threshold Georgian juries are documented undervaluing goods against, in the mercy-motivated perjury Blackstone himself named — see [[entity-pious-perjury]].

## References
- [[claim-englands-bloody-code-made-petty-property-theft-a-capital-crime]]
- [[claim-georgian-juries-undervalued-stolen-goods-to-avoid-the-death-penalty]]
- [[claim-12-pence-grand-larceny-threshold-is-common-law-not-a-bloody-code-statute]]