From the time of Henry VIII to that of Queen Victoria, those convicted of the "abominable crime" of buggery or sodomy were liable to be executed. In 1861 in England and 1889 in Scotland the maximum penalty for homosexual acts was changed to life imprisonment. In the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, acts of "gross indecency" not amounting to buggery, hitherto not regarded as a crime, were made subject to two years hard labour: it was under this act that Oscar Wilde was prosecuted.