ted Kingdom to high treason and murder; (2)
alteration of the law of homicide so as to classify homicides according
to their gravity, and to confine capital punishment to murder in the
first degree; (3) modification of the law as to child murder so as to
punish certain cases of infanticide as misdemeanours; (4) authorizing
judges to direct sentence of death to be recorded; (5) the
abolition--since carried out--of public executions.

AUTHORITIES.--Beccaria, _Dei Delitte e delle Pene_ (1790); Bentham,
_Rationale of Punishment_; Lammasch, _Grundris des Strafrechts_
(Leipzig, 1902); Olivecrona, _De la peine de mort_; Mittermaier,
_Capital Punishment; Report of the Royal Commission on Capital
Punishment_ (Parl. Pap., 1866, No. 10,438); Oldfield, _The Penalty of
Death_ (1901); Pollock and Maitland, _History of English Law_; Pike,
_History of Crime_; Sir J.F. Stephen, _History of Crime in England_;
S. Walpole, _History of England_, vol. i. p. 191; vol. iv. p. 74;
Andrews' _Old Time Punishments; A Century of Law Reform_ (London,
1901); Lecture ii. by Sir H.B. Poland; Howard Association
Publications. (W. F. C.)

CAPITO (or KOPFEL), WOLFGANG [FABRICIUS] (1478-1541), German reformer,
was born of humble parentage at Hagenau in Alsace. He was educated for
the medical profession, but also studied law, and applied himself so
earnestly to theology that he received the doctorate in that faculty
also, and, having joined the Benedictines, taught for some time at
Freiburg. He acted for three years as pastor in Bruchsal, and was then
called to the cathedral church of Basel (1515). Here he made the
acquaintance of Zwingli and began to correspond with Luther. In 1519 he
removed to Mainz at the request of Albrecht, archbishop of that city,
who soon made him his chancellor. In 1523 he settled at Strassburg,
where he remained till his death in November 1541. He had found it
increasingly difficult to reconcile the new religion with the old, and
from 1524 was one of the leaders of the reformed faith in Strassburg. He
took a prominent part in the earlier ecclesiastical transactions of the
16th century, was present at the second conference of Zurich and at the
conference of Marburg, and along with Martin Bucer drew up the
_Confessio Tetrapolitana_. Capito was always more concerned for the
"unity of the spirit" than for dogmatic formularies, and from his
endeavours to conciliate the Lutheran and Zwinglian parties in r