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], as pictured in the ]]] | |||
], drawing, and quartering, of the conspirators in the ]]] | |||
To be '''hanged, drawn and quartered''' (sometimes rendered '''hung, drawn and quartered''') was from 1351 the penalty in England for men guilty of ], although its use is first recorded during the reign of ] and that of his successor, ]. The convicted were fastened to a wooden ] which was dragged by horse to the place of execution. Once there, they were ritually ] (almost to the point of death), ], ], ] and quartered (chopped into four pieces). As a warning against further dissent, these remains were often displayed at prominent places, such as ]. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were ]. | |||
To be '''hanged, drawn and quartered''' was the ] for ] in ] ], and remained on the ] but seldom used in the ]{{Citation needed|date=November 2009}} and ] until abolished under the ]. It was a spectacularly gruesome and public form of ] and ], and was reserved only for this most serious crime, which was deemed more heinous than murder and other ]. It was applied only to male criminals, except on the ].<ref name= Burn-928>Richard Burn (1836), ''The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer'', Volume III (Criminal Law) of V volumes. T. Cadell. </ref> Women found guilty of treason were sentenced to be taken to a place of execution and ], a punishment changed to hanging by the ] in Great Britain,<ref name= Burn-928/> and 1796 in Ireland. It was also practised, with variations, in other countries. The variations involved the torturing process and the crimes for which it was reserved. | |||
Although some convicts had their sentences commuted and suffered a less ignominious end, over a period of several hundred years many men found guilty of treason endured the full sanction of the law. Many notable figures were subjected to the punishment, including over 100 English ] priests executed at ]. Plotters engaged in religious conspiracies like the ] were killed this way, as were some of the ] involved in sentencing ] to death. During the 1685 ], several hundred rebels were dispatched by this method in less than a month. | |||
== Details == | |||
Although the Act of ] that defined high treason remains on the United Kingdom's statute books, hanging, drawing and quartering was in 1814 downgraded to drawing, hanging until dead, and posthumous beheading and quartering. It was finally abolished in England in 1870. | |||
Until reformed under the ],<ref name= Burn-928/> the full punishment for the crime of treason was to be ''hanged, drawn and quartered'' in that the condemned prisoner would be: | |||
==Treason in England== | |||
#Dragged on a hurdle (a wooden frame) to the place of execution. This is one possible meaning of ''drawn''.<ref></ref> | |||
], as pictured at ]]] | |||
#] by the neck for a short time or until almost dead (''hanged''). | |||
The first recorded instance of a person being hanged, drawn and quartered in England is that of William Maurice, who in 1241, during ]'s reign, was convicted of piracy.<ref name="Milhornp414">{{Harvnb|Milhorn|2004|p=414}}</ref> However, the punishment is more frequently recorded during ]'s reign.<ref>{{Harvnb|Diehl|Donnelly|2009|p=58}}</ref> ] was the first nobleman in England to receive the sentence. He had previously fought alongside Edward, but in 1282 he turned against the king, and on the death of his brother proclaimed himself ] and ]. He was captured, tried and executed in 1283; his quarters were distributed across the country, while his head was placed atop the ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Beadle|Harrison|2008|p=11}}</ref> The ] rebel leader ] suffered a similar fate. Captured and tried in 1305, he was strapped to a hurdle and dragged by horse through the streets of London, to the scaffold at ]. Along the way he was whipped and hit by the spectators, who also threw rotten food and waste at him. After being hanged, and while still alive, he was emasculated and eviscerated. He was then beheaded and quartered. His preserved head (dipped in ]) was placed on a spike on ] (the first to appear there), while his arms and legs were displayed at various towns across England and Scotland.<ref>{{Harvnb|Beadle|Harrison|2008|p=12}}</ref> | |||
#] and ] and the genitalia and entrails burned before the condemned's eyes (this is another meaning of ''drawn''—see the reference to the '']'' below)<ref></ref><ref> At the end of the article there is a description of the executions. They were all hanged, drawn and quartered apart from Francis Hacker who was hanged.</ref> | |||
#The body ], then divided into four parts (''quartered''). | |||
These and other executions (such as those of ]<ref>{{Citation | last = Summerson | first = Henry | chapter = Harclay , Andrew, earl of Carlisle (c.1270–1323) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2008 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12235 | accessdate = 18 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/12235}}</ref> and ]<ref>{{Citation | last = Hamilton | first = J. S. | chapter = Despenser, Hugh, the younger, first Lord Despenser (d. 1326) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2008 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7554 | accessdate = 19 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/7554}}</ref>) happened when acts of ] in England, and their punishments, were not clearly defined in ].{{#tag:ref|Treason before 1351 was defined by ]'s ]. As Patrick Wormald writes, "if anyone plots against the king's life ... , he is liable for his life and all that he owns ... or to clear himself by the king's wergeld."<ref>{{Harvnb|Wormald|2001|pp=280–281}}</ref>|group="nb"}} Treason was based on an allegiance to the sovereign from all subjects aged 14 or over, and it remained for the king and his judges to determine if that allegiance had been broken.<ref>{{Harvnb|Tanner|1940|p=375}}</ref> The ], passed in the 25th year of ]'s reign and still in force today, was an attempt to resolve this ambiguity.<ref name="Dubberpp2425">{{Harvnb|Dubber|2005|pp=24–25}}</ref><ref name="Leep156">{{Harvnb|Lee|2009|p=156}}</ref><ref name="FuPetersonYoungpp152153">{{Harvnb|Fu|Peterson|Young|2005|pp=152–153}}</ref> It was enacted at a time in English history when a monarch's right to rule was indisputable, and was therefore written principally to protect the throne and sovereign.<ref>{{Harvnb|Tanner|1940|pp=375–376}}</ref> The act split the old feudal offence of treason into two classes.<ref>{{Harvnb|Dubber|2005|p=25}}</ref> ] referred to the killing of a master (or lord) by his servant, a husband by his wife, or a prelate by his clergyman. Men guilty of petty treason were drawn and hanged, while women were ].{{#tag:ref|Women were considered the legal property of their husbands,<ref>{{Harvnb|Caine|Sluga|2002|pp=12–13}}</ref> and so a woman convicted of killing her husband was guilty not of murder, but petty treason. For disrupting the social order a degree of retribution was therefore required; hanging was considered insufficient for such a heinous crime.<ref name="Briggsp84"/>|group="nb"}}<ref>{{Harvnb|Blackstone|Christian|Chitty|Hovenden|Ryland|1832|pp=156–157}}</ref> | |||
Typically, the resulting five parts (i.e., the four quarters of the body and the head) were ]ed (put on public display) in different parts of the city, town, or, in famous cases, in the country, to deter would-be traitors who had not seen the execution. After 1814, the convict would be hanged until dead and the mutilation would be performed ]. Gibbeting was later abolished in England in 1843, while drawing and quartering was abolished in 1870. | |||
===High treason=== | |||
There is debate among modern historians about whether "drawing" referred to the dragging to the place of execution or the disembowelling, but since two different words are used in the official documents detailing the trial of ] ("''detrahatur''" for drawing as a method of transport, and "''devaletur''" for disembowelment), there is no doubt that the subjects of the punishment were disembowelled.<ref>George Neilson, "Drawing, Hanging and Quartering" published in '']'', 15 August 1891; s7-XII: 129–131.</ref> | |||
] was the most egregious offence an individual could commit, seen as a direct threat to the king's right to govern. Attempts to undermine his authority were viewed with as much seriousness as if the accused had made a direct assault on his body, which itself would be an attack on his status as sovereign. As such an attack could potentially undermine the state, retribution was considered an absolute necessity, for which the ultimate punishment was required.<ref>{{Harvnb|Jones|2007–2008|pp=78–79}}</ref> The practical difference between the two offences therefore was in the consequence of being convicted; rather than being drawn and hanged, men were to be hanged, drawn and quartered, while for reasons of public decency (their anatomy being considered inappropriate for the sentence), women were instead drawn and burnt.<ref name="Briggsp84">{{Harvnb|Briggs|1996|p=84}}</ref><ref name="Naishp9">{{Harvnb|Naish|1991|p=9}}</ref> The act declared that a person was committing high treason if engaged in one of the following seven offences: | |||
#compassing or imagining the death of the king, his wife or his eldest son and heir, | |||
Judges delivering sentence at the ] also seemed to have had some confusion over the term "drawn", and some sentences are summarized as "Drawn, Hanged and Quartered". Nevertheless, the sentence was often recorded quite explicitly. For example, the record of the trial of Thomas Wallcot, John Rouse, William Hone and William Blake for offences against the king, on 12 July 1683 (see ]) concludes as follows: | |||
#violating the king's wife, his eldest daughter if she was unmarried, or the wife of his eldest son and heir, | |||
#levying war against the king in his ], | |||
#adhering to the king's enemies in his realm, giving them aid and comfort in his realm or elsewhere; | |||
#counterfeiting the ] or the ], or the king's coinage, | |||
#knowingly importing counterfeit money, | |||
#killing the ], ] or one of the king's Justices while performing their offices.<ref name="FuPetersonYoungpp152153"/> | |||
However, the act also contains the proviso: | |||
{{quotation|Then Sentence was passed, as followeth, viz. That they should return to the place from whence they came, from thence be '''drawn''' to the Common place of Execution upon Hurdles, and there to be '''Hanged''' by the Necks, then cut down alive, their Privy-Members cut off, and Bowels taken out to be burned before their Faces, their Heads to be severed from their Bodies, and their Bodies '''divided into four parts''', to be disposed of as the King should think fit.<ref>Thomas Wallcot, John Rouse, William Hone, William Blake, offences against the King: treason, 12th July, 1683. ''The Proceedings of the Old Bailey'' Ref: t16830712-4. See </ref>}} | |||
{{Quote|And because many other cases of like treason, may happen in time to come, which a man cannot think or declare at this present time; It is accorded, that if any other case, supposed treason, which is not above specified, doth happen anew before any justices, the justices shall tarry without going to judgement of treason, till the case be showed before the king and his parliament, and it be declared whether it ought to be judged treason or other felony.<ref>{{Harvnb|Lee|2009|pp=156–157}}</ref>}} | |||
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' notes both meanings of ''drawn'': "To draw out the viscera or intestines of ... a traitor or other criminal after hanging" and "To drag (a criminal) at a horse's tail, or on a hurdle or the like, to the place of execution". It states that "In many cases of executions it is uncertain is meant. The presumption is that where ''drawn'' is mentioned after ''hanged'', the sense is ."<ref>''Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition'', Oxford University Press, 1989</ref> | |||
Therefore it did not fully constrain the monarch's authority to define the scope of treason, and gave English judges discretion to extend it whenever required—otherwise known as ].<ref name="Dubberpp2425"/><ref>{{Harvnb|Lee|2009|p=157}}</ref> | |||
The condemned man would usually be sentenced to the short drop method of hanging, so that the neck would not break. The man was usually dragged alive to the quartering table, although in some cases men were brought to the table dead or unconscious. A splash of water was usually employed to wake the man if unconscious, then he was laid down on the table. A large cut was made in the gut after removing the genitalia, and the intestines would be spooled out on a device that resembled a dough roller. Each piece of organ would be burned before the sufferer's eyes, and when he was completely disembowelled, his head would be cut off. The body would then be cut into four pieces, and the king would decide where they were to be displayed. Usually the head was sent to the Tower of London and, as in the case of ], the other four pieces were sent to different parts of the country. The head was generally ] in brine to preserve the appearance of the head in display, while the quarters were more often prepared in ], for longer-lasting deterrent displays. | |||
== |
==The sentence== | ||
Only one witness was required to convict a person of treason, although in 1552 this was increased to two. Suspects were first questioned in private by the ]. At the public trial, defendants were allowed no witnesses and no defence ], and were generally presumed guilty from the outset. This system remained in place until the ] was passed, allowing defendants counsel, witnesses, a copy of their indictment, and a jury. When not charged with an attempt on the monarch's life, they were to be prosecuted within three years of the alleged offence.<ref>{{Harvnb|Feilden|2009|pp=6–7}}</ref> | |||
=== Middle Ages === | |||
], the instigator of hanging, drawing and quartering, as depicted in ''Cassell's History of England'']] | |||
H. Thomas Milhorn states that hanging, drawing and quartering was first used against ], who was convicted of ] in 1241.<ref>H Thomas Milhorn, ''Crime: Computer Viruses to Twin Towers'', Universal Publishers, 2004. ISBN 1-58112-489-9</ref> This would make ] the first practitioner. | |||
After being sentenced, malefactors were usually held in prison for a few days before being drawn by horse to the place of execution, usually on a ], their hands tied. Once stripped of their clothing, they were taken to the scaffold and ] for a short period, but only to cause ] and near-death. They were then ], and normally ].{{#tag:ref|Some modern sources do not mention the latter part of the sentence, but this is by no means an indicator that it did not still occur.|group="nb"}} Those still conscious at this point might have seen their entrails burnt, before their heart was removed. The body was then ], signalling an unquestionable death,<ref>Richardson argues that it was thought that degrees of death existed, and that a person could, perhaps, be killed more than once: Ruth Richardson, ''Death, Dissection, and the Destitute'', second edition, (Chicago: University of | |||
The punishment was more notoriously and verifiably employed by ] ("Longshanks") in his efforts to bring Wales, Scotland, and Ireland under English rule. | |||
Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 16-17</ref> and quartered (chopped into four pieces). Each dismembered piece of the body was later displayed publicly, as a warning to others.<ref name="Jonespp8182">{{Harvnb|Jones|2007–2008|pp=81–82}}</ref><ref name="Abbottpp158159">{{Harvnb|Abbott|2005|pp=158–159}}</ref> | |||
In 1283, it was inflicted on the Welsh prince ] in ]. Dafydd had been a hostage in the English court in his youth, growing up with Edward and for several years fought alongside Edward against his brother ], the ]. Llywelyn had won recognition of the title, "Prince of Wales", from Edward's father ], and both Edward and his father had been imprisoned by Llywelyn's ally, ], the Earl of Leicester, in 1264. | |||
] (1616). The spiked heads of executed criminals are visible above the gatehouse.]] | |||
Edward's enmity towards Llywelyn ran deep. When Dafydd returned to the side of his brother and attacked the English ], Edward saw this as both a personal betrayal and a military setback and hence his punishment of Dafydd was specifically designed to be harsher than any previous form of capital punishment. The punishment was part of an overarching strategy to eliminate Welsh independence. Edward built an "iron ring" of castles in Wales and had Dafydd's young sons incarcerated for life in ] and daughters sent to a convent in England, whilst having his own son, ], assume the title Prince of Wales. Dafydd's head joined that of his brother Llywelyn (killed in a skirmish months earlier) on top of the ], where the skulls were still visible many years later. His quartered body parts were sent to four English towns for display. | |||
After Wallace, the heads of the executed were often displayed on ], for centuries the route by which many travellers from the south entered the city. On occasion accompanied by the parboiled quarters of executed men, such gruesome trophies served as a more permanent reminder of the penalty for treason. Several eminent commentators remarked on the displays; in 1566 ] wrote that "in London there were many heads on the bridge ... I have seen there, as if they were masts of ships, and at the top of them, quarters of men's corpses", and in 1602 the ] emphasised the ominous nature of their presence when he wrote "near the end of the bridge, on the suburb side, were stuck up the heads of thirty gentlemen of high standing who had been beheaded on account of treason and secret practices against the Queen".<ref>{{Harvnb|Abbott|2005|pp=159–160}}</ref>{{#tag:ref|Women's heads sometimes adorned the bridge; ] was a domestic servant at ] in ] who became a ]. After forecasting the early death of ], she was drawn to ] on 20 April 1534, and hanged and beheaded.<ref>{{Harvnb|Abbott|2005|pp=160–161}}</ref>|group="nb"}} | |||
Some confusion exists over the meaning of the term ''hanged, drawn and quartered''. One of the '']'''s definitions of draw is "to draw out the viscera or intestines of; to disembowel (a fowl, etc. before cooking, a traitor or other criminal after hanging)", but is followed by the postscript "in many cases of executions it is uncertain whether this, or sense 4 , is meant. The presumption is that where ''drawn'' is mentioned after ''hanged'', the sense is as here."<ref>{{Citation | title = draw {{subscription}} | series = Oxford English Dictionary | url = http://dictionary.oed.com/ | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at dictionary.oed.com | edition = 2 | year = 1989 | accessdate = 18 August 2010 | postscript=.}}</ref> Author S. R. Sharma arrives at the same conclusion: "Where, as in the popular ''hung, drawn and quartered'' (meaning, facetiously, of a person, completely disposed of), ''drawn'' follows ''hanged'' or ''hung'', it is to be referred to as the disembowelling of the traitor."<ref>{{Harvnb|Sharma|2003|p=9}}</ref> However, the historian and author ] disagrees. In an essay published on his website, he writes that the separate mention of evisceration is a relatively modern device, and that while it certainly took place on many occasions, the presumption that ''drawing'' means to disembowel is spurious. Instead, drawing (as a method of transportation) may be mentioned after hanging because it was a supplementary part of the execution.<ref>{{Citation | last = Mortimer | first = Ian | title = Why do we say ‘hanged, drawn and quartered?’ | url = http://www.ianmortimer.com/essays/drawing.pdf | publisher = ianmortimer.com | date = 30 March 2010 | accessdate = 20 August 2010}}</ref> | |||
Two decades later, on 23 August 1305, ] was the next person to be hanged, drawn and quartered, which occurred as a result of Edward I's ]. This established the precedent as the ultimate penalty for treason against the English crown. Both Dafydd ap Gruffydd and William Wallace asserted at their trials that they were not traitors for having fought in defence of Wales and Scotland against foreign invaders.<ref>Brown, Chris. ''William Wallace. The True Story of Braveheart''. Stroud: Tempus Publishing Ltd, 2005. ISBN 0-7524-3432-2</ref> Wallace, unlike his Welsh counterpart, had never fought for Edward before fighting against him. | |||
Before they were hanged, prisoners normally gave a public speech, expressing their remorse and asking for forgiveness. This was a form of ritual cleansing, illustrated by one example where a young man already on the ladder, refusing to believe that he had been forgiven by God, was called back down by the ] clergyman ]. The clergyman managed to convince him that he had been forgiven, and the youth reportedly went to his death "with tears of joy in his eyes ... as if he actually saw himself delivered from the hell which he feared before, and heaven opened for receiving his soul".<ref>{{Harvnb|Briggs|1996|p=85}}</ref> | |||
During the ], it became a much used sentence and numerous Scots were so executed including Sir Alexander Seton, three of King Robert Bruce's brothers: Alexander, Thomas and Nigel Bruce, and ].<ref>Scott, Ronald McNair, Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots</ref> | |||
===Robbing of honour=== | |||
The leader of the ] uprising during the ], Geoffrey Litster, was hanged, drawn, and quartered after the ] (1381), on the orders of the war-like ], Bishop of ]<ref> John Capgrave, ''Liber de Illustribus Henricus'' Part III Ch.9</ref>. | |||
{{Quote box | quote=The sentence of hanging, drawing, and quartering punished the guilty traitor via his body. Although gruesome and cruel by today's standards, the practice was a logical legal mechanism that reflected complex conceptual understandings of the time. It magnified and inverted the crime perpetrated on the integrity of the king by mutilating and completely destroying the physical body of the traitor. Various steps involved in the penalty worked to stamp the authority of the monarch on the criminal and to purge the threat by marking the dishonour of the condemned. Central to this punishment was the understanding that the physical body and individual were inextricably intertwined even immediately after death. Therefore, it followed that the penalty should operate by targeting the body.|source = Maeve Jones<ref>{{Harvnb|Jones|2007–2008|pp=84–85}}</ref>|align=right|width=33%}} | |||
According to history student Maeve Jones's essay on high treason, each step of the procedure marked a rite of passage and the "progressive robbing of honour from the offender". Dragging was a form of transport usually reserved for carcasses and other low-value goods, and served to humiliate the offender. Removing their clothing stripped them of their social status.<ref name="Jonespp8182"/> Several purposes were served by the criminal's mutilation. In the case of ], his hanging was punishment for theft: "that you are found as a thief, and therefore shall be hanged". For being a traitor, he was quartered, and for being an outlaw he was beheaded. For coming between the king and queen he was disembowelled, and his organs burnt. In the opinion of Professor Robert Kastenbaum, Hugh's mutilation (presuming that his disembowelment was post-mortem) was a reminder to the crowd that dissent was not tolerated. The corpse became so unrecognisable to them that any compassion was unlikely, and even in the afterlife, God might no longer want Hugh—a view which lingered for centuries, exemplified by the controversy surrounding the dissection of corpses for ]. Quartering the corpse might also remove any prospect of funereal support, as relatives had to wait until the spiked remains had decomposed before they were allowed to bury them. Since relatives were normally responsible for taking care of a recently departed family member, denying them a funeral in this way spread the traitor's shame onto his family.<ref>{{Harvnb|Jones|2007–2008|pp=83–84}}</ref> Kastenbaum also suggests that burning the ] might also have been to expel any evil spirits contained within.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kastenbaum|2004|pp=193–195}}</ref> Jones writes that the evisceration of an offender while conscious did not just mark his public disgrace; the intimacy of the executioner's method also highlighted the offender's submission to legitimate authority. The burning of his organs may have been a supplementary form of torture, a method of prolonging his agony.<ref>{{Harvnb|Jones|2007–2008|pp=81, 83}}</ref> | |||
{{-}} | |||
== |
==Use in England== | ||
This section provides several notable examples of when the sentence was used, in what context, and how treason law was modified to suit. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of those people hanged, drawn and quartered. | |||
The leaders of the first ], ] and ], were hanged, drawn and quartered on 27 June 1497 at ].<ref></ref> | |||
===Plantagenets=== | |||
In an attempt to intimidate the Catholic clergy into taking the ], ] ordered that ], the prior of the ], be hanged, drawn and quartered, along with two other ]. Henry also famously condemned ] to this form of execution for being one of ]'s lovers. Dereham and the King's good friend ] were both executed shortly before Catherine herself, but Culpeper was spared the cruel punishment and was instead beheaded. Sir ], who was found guilty of high treason under the ], was spared this punishment; Henry commuted the execution to one by beheading. | |||
Also introduced in 1351 was the ]. This and other social grievances including the ], were instrumental in prompting the 1381 ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Oman|1906|p=5}}</ref> Its leader, ], was killed in June 1381 at Smithfield, during a meeting with the young King ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Oman|1906|p=75}}</ref> The ] priest ], also involved in the uprising, immediately fled, but was captured less than a month later. He was hanged, drawn and quartered on 15 July.<ref>{{Citation | last = Prescott | first = Andrew | chapter = Ball, John (d. 1381) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2008 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1214 | accessdate = 22 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/1214}}</ref> The uprising led to a change in the law in 1382, making it treason to start a riot. The law was again changed with the ].{{clarify|date=January 2011|reason=Changed in what way? Don't be vague.}}<ref name="Feildenp4">{{Harvnb|Feilden|2009|p=4}}</ref> | |||
Richard had succeeded to the throne while still a child, and in the ensuing power struggles between his advisers ] was one of those who fell foul of court politics. He was accused of misleading the young king, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered in 1388.<ref>{{Citation | last = Waldron | first = Ronald | chapter = Usk, Thomas (c.1354–1388) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2008 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28030 | accessdate = 22 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/28030}}</ref> Soon after Richard was deposed by ], ], a Welshman loyal to Richard, became the leader of the ],<ref>{{Citation | last = Smith | first = Llinos | chapter = Glyn Dŵr , Owain (c.1359–c.1416) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2008 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10816 | accessdate = 22 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/10816}}</ref> subsequently defeating Henry's army at the ]. Henry responded by bringing up from Worcester a large army to capture Owain. ] was pressured into his service, but as a loyal patriot, and with two sons in Owain's army, he led the king in the wrong direction. This allowed Owain to escape, and when in 1401 Llywelyn admitted to Henry what he had done, the king had him disembowelled and dismembered at ].<ref>{{Citation | last = Steffan | first = Rhobert ap | title = Llywelyn Ap Gruffydd Fychan | url = http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southwest/sites/llandovery/pages/llywelyn.shtml | publisher = bbc.co.uk | date = 7 Wales 2006 | accessdate = 22 August 2010}}</ref> | |||
In the aftermath of the ] to murder ] and replace her on the throne with ], the conspirators were condemned to this method of execution in September 1586. On hearing of the appalling agony to which the first seven condemned were subjected while being butchered on the scaffold, Elizabeth ordered that the remaining conspirators, who were to be dispatched on the following day, should be left hanging until they were dead. Other Elizabethans who were executed in this way include Elizabeth's own physician, Dr. ], a Portuguese Jew who was convicted of conspiring against her in 1594, and the Jesuit ]. | |||
At the start of ]'s reign in 1461, ], was appointed to the king's council. He became ], and the following year was made ], with authority to try all cases of treason. He was responsible for many executions, but the hanging, drawing and quartering of 20 of the earl of Warwick's men provoked strong public condemnation, and when Edward fled the country to be replaced by ], Tiptoft was arraigned and condemned for high treason. He was beheaded on ], in October 1470.<ref>{{Citation | last = Kohl | first = Benjamin G. | chapter = Tiptoft , John, first earl of Worcester (1427–1470) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2006 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27471 | accessdate = 22 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/27471}}</ref> | |||
===Seventeenth century=== | |||
Other notable deaths from the punishment include ] and his co-conspirators in the ] to assassinate ] in 1605. Fawkes, though weakened by torture, cheated the executioners. When he was to be hanged until almost dead, he jumped from the gallows, so that his neck broke and he died more quickly. A co-conspirator, Robert Keyes, had attempted the same trick, but the rope broke, so he was drawn fully conscious. Jesuit Father ] was executed on 3 May 1606 at St. Paul's. His crime was having been ] of several members of the Gunpowder Plot. Many spectators thought that his sentence was too severe. ] writes: | |||
===Tudor England=== | |||
{{quotation|With a loud cry of 'hold, hold' they stopped the hangman cutting down the body while Garnet was still alive. Others pulled the priest's legs ... which was traditionally done to ensure a speedy death.<ref>], ''Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot'', Anchor, 1997. ISBN 0-385-47190-4</ref>}} | |||
], flanked by members of his family and court (c. 1545)]] | |||
During ]'s reign treason law was again modified, on this occasion making it possible to commit treason only against the ''de facto'' king, and not '']''.<ref name="Feildenp4"/> Between 1533 and 1540, Henry VII's son, ], ], the start of years of religious tension in England.<ref name="Haynesp12">{{Harvnb|Haynes|2005|p=12}}</ref> The eighth Henry made it treason to ignore a legal summons to surrender, or to injure the king, or even to wish him injury.<ref>{{Harvnb|Feilden|2009|pp=4–5}}</ref> One also could not call the king a heretic or deny his royal titles, and in 1535 therefore the ] priest ] and four of his colleagues were dragged to Tyburn to be executed, when Houghton refused to swear the recently enacted ].<ref name="Abbottp161">{{Harvnb|Abbott|2005|p=161}}</ref> Houghton said on the scaffold: "Our holy mother the Church has decreed otherwise than the king and parliament have decreed. I am therefore bound in conscience and am ready and willing to suffer every kind of torture rather than deny a doctrine of the Church".<ref>{{Citation | last = Hogg | first = James | chapter = Houghton, John <nowiki></nowiki> (1486/7–1535) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2008 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13867 | accessdate = 18 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/13867}}</ref> The execution is recorded in the Catholic archives: | |||
{{Quote|Then he cut open his belly, dragged out his bowels, his heart and all else, and threw them into a fire, during which our blessed Father not only did not cry out on account of the intolerable pain, but on the contrary during all this time until his heart was torn out, prayed continually, to the wonder not only of the presiding officer but of all the people who witnessed it. Being at his last gasp, and nearly disembowelled, he said to his tormentor while in the act of tearing out his heart, "Good Jesu, what will you do with my heart?" and saying this, he expired. And lastly his head was cut off and the beheaded body was divided into four parts, the remains thrown into cauldrons and parboiled, and put up at different places in the city. And one arm of our Father was suspended over the gate of our Carthusians' house.<ref name="Abbottp161"/>}} | |||
Early in the ], ], a prominent Parliamentarian who because of his radical views was known as "Free Born John", was captured by the Royalists while serving as a captain in the Parliamentary army. Moves were taken to try him and some other prisoners of war as traitors, but when on 17 December 1642 Parliament ] (to retaliate in kind) he was instead exchanged for Royalist prisoners.<ref>Andrew Sharp, "Lilburne, John (1615?–1657)", ], Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Oct 2006</ref> From then on in England during the war Royalist prisoners of war were not tried and executed as traitors, but the Parliamentary side were well aware of what could happen if they lost the war, as the ] a Parliamentarian general said "We may beat the king 99 times, and yet he will be king still. If he beats us but once, we shall be hanged".<ref>Andrew Sharp (1998). ''The English Levellers'', Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521625114, 9780521625111. </ref> | |||
Henry later made it treasonous to deny the validity of his marriage to ], and later still made it an offence to maintain the validity of the same marriage. His union later with ] proved lethal for ] and ], after it was discovered that they each had carnal knowledge of Katherine. Both men were executed in November 1541. Culpeper was drawn on a hurdle to Tyburn and beheaded there, in itself unusual since most beheadings were carried out at ]. There was nothing to distinguish Dereham's punishment however, as he was hanged, drawn and quartered in the same place. Katherine was deprived of her queenship, and was beheaded in February the following year.<ref>{{Citation | last = Warnicke | first = Retha M. | chapter = Katherine <nowiki></nowiki> (1518x24–1542) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2008 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4892 | accessdate = 19 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/4892}}</ref> Many of Henry's modifications to treason law were repealed but then re-enacted by Henry's son and heir, ], who also made it treason for more than 12 people to meet and discuss state affairs. Edward died a young man, however, and was succeeded by his half-sister, ], who removed the changes from the statute books. Mary also attempted to return England to Catholicism, but her marriage in 1554 to ] proved to be deeply unpopular, so much so that it was made treasonous to pray for her death, or to preach against Philip's title as king.<ref name="Feildenp5">{{Harvnb|Feilden|2009|p=5}}</ref> Her marriage prompted ] to ] against the union, but the rising failed and consequently he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. This was commuted to beheading; his head was later exhibited on a gallows near ], while his quarters were displayed at various places across the city. As many as 400 rebels may have been killed for their involvement in the uprising.<ref>{{Harvnb|Jesse|1847|pp=386–387}}</ref> Also caught in the aftermath was ], a Welsh scholar accused by some of the rebels of planning to murder the queen. He was hanged, drawn and quartered in May that year. His head was placed on London Bridge, and the rest of his body at ].<ref>{{Citation | last = Hamilton | first = Dakota L. | chapter = Thomas, William (d. 1554) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2005 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27242 | accessdate = 20 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/27242}}</ref> | |||
The same restraint did not apply to those Irish considered to be rebels. The Irish Baron ], was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1642, having been one of the conspirators involved in the foiled plot to seize ] the year before. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn in 1645. | |||
Mary was succeeded to the throne by her Protestant half-sister, ]. One of her first acts was the 1559 ], which amongst other things made denying her title an act of treason. Further acts, such as the ], increased the number of offences by which an individual could be tried for treason.<ref name="Feildenp5"/> English Catholics struggled in a society dominated by the newly separate and increasingly ] ]. Elizabeth's response to the growing religious and political divide was to increase the severity of anti-Catholic legislation, with stiff penalties exacted on those who refused to comply.<ref name="Haynesp12"/> Priests such as ] and ], two of the ], fell foul of these laws and were hanged, drawn and quartered.<ref>{{Citation | last = Trudgian | first = Raymond Francis | chapter = Mayne, Cuthbert <nowiki></nowiki> (bap. 1544, d. 1577) {{subscription}}| work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2008 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18440 | accessdate = 19 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/18440}}</ref><ref>{{Citation | last = Graves | first = Michael A. R. | chapter = Campion, Edmund <nowiki></nowiki> (1540–1581) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2008 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4539 | accessdate = 19 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/4539}}</ref> Other Tudor conspiracies, such as the ], resulted in further executions: | |||
Under the Commonwealth, ] a member of a plot to assassinate the Lord Protector ] only avoided being hanged, drawn and quartered because he took poison before the sentence could be carried out.<ref>Royle, Trevor, ''Civil War: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1638-1660''. Abacus 2006, (first published 2004). ISBN 978-0-349-11564-1. p. 728</ref> ], being a priest, was prosecuted under the Elizabethan anti-priest legislation which prescribed the sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering. He was hanged but spared the drawing and quartering. | |||
{{Quote | John Ballard a preest, and first persuader of Babington to these odious treasons, was laid aloue vpon an hurdell, and six others two and two in like sort, all drawne from Tower hill through the citie of London, untu a field at the vpper end of Holborne, hard by the high waie side to saint Giles in the field, where was erected a scaffold for their execution, and a paire of gallows of extraordinarie hight ... and although the thousands were thought (and indeed so seemed) to be numberlesse: yet somewhat to note the huge multitude, there were by computation able men enow to giue battell to a strong enimie ... On the first daie the traitors were placed vpon the scaffold, that the one might behold the reward of his fellowes treason. Ballard the preest, who was the first brocher of this treason, was the first that was hanged, who being cut downe (according to judgement) was dismembred, his bellie ript up, his bowels and traitorous heart taken out and throwne into the fire, his head also (seuered from his shoulders) was set on a short stake vpon the top of the gallows, and the trunke of his bodie quartered and imbrued in his owne bloud, wherewith the executioners hands were bathed, and some of the standers by (but to their great loathing, as not able for their liues to auoid it, such was the throng) beesprinkled.<ref>{{Harvnb|Holinshed|1808|pp=915–916}}</ref>}} | |||
Over six days in October 1660, after the ] of ], nine of those convicted of the ] of ] in 1649 were executed in London in the prescribed manner. Those executed were: ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], and ]. Three more regicides suffered the same fate within two years: ], ] and ]. Additionally, the corpses of ], ] and ] were disinterred and hanged, drawn and quartered in ]s for their involvement in the regicide. | |||
===The Stuart era and English Interregnum=== | |||
Only a few months later on 6 January 1661, about fifty ]s, headed by a wine-cooper named ], made an effort to attain possession of London in the name of "King Jesus". Most of the fifty were either killed or taken prisoner, and on 19 and 21 January, Venner and ten others were hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason.<ref>]. , and </ref> | |||
] | |||
For their part in the ], a conspiracy to kill Elizabeth's successor ] and replace him with a Catholic monarch, from 30–31 January 1606 the surviving eight Catholic conspirators were hanged, drawn and quartered. The most notorious, ], managed to cheat the executioner by jumping from the scaffold while his head was in the noose, breaking his neck.<ref>{{Harvnb|Northcote Parkinson|1976|pp=91–92}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Fraser|2005|pp=283}}</ref> His lifeless body was nevertheless drawn and quartered,<ref>{{Harvnb|Allen|1973|p=37}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Thompson|2008|p=102}}</ref> and his body parts distributed to "the four corners of the kingdom".<ref>{{citation |title=Guy Fawkes |publisher=York Museums Trust |url=http://www.historyofyork.org.uk//themes/tudor-stuart/guy-fawkes |accessdate=16 May 2010}}</ref> | |||
Use of the sentence continued through the ]. ] was the only Catholic priest executed during the ] under ], and the last person executed simply for being a priest in England. Arrested on 19 June 1654, he was tried before the common serjeant, and not the high court of justice (which had sole jurisdiction over treasons), meaning that he was probably executed under an earlier conviction. He refused to deny that he was a priest, an option which might have saved his life. Foreign ambassadors pleaded on his behalf, but unlike the kings and queens before him Cromwell had no authority to pardon the priest, who was to be hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 28 June. Instead Cromwell ordered that surgeons be present at his execution, to sew the corpse back together so that it could be sent to ] for burial. Exhumed when the college was demolished, it is the only corpse of an English Catholic martyr to have survived into modern times.<ref>{{Citation | last = Morrill | first = John | chapter = Southworth, John <nowiki></nowiki> (1592–1654) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | year = 2004 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/67460 | accessdate = 19 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/67460}}</ref> | |||
In October 1663 twenty-six men were arrested, imprisoned, and tried in York for their participation in ]. Twenty three were hanged, drawn and quartered in York, but three rebels escaped from prison only to be recaptured in Leeds early the next year where they were then executed in a similar manner.<ref>Hopper, Andrew. , The Historical Journal (2002), 45: 281-303 Cambridge University Press.</ref> | |||
With the restoration to the throne of ], ], a ] and ] who helped sentence Charles's father ] to death, was himself executed for high treason.{{#tag:ref|Although Harrison was a ], no such crime existed in English law and he was therefore charged with high treason.<ref name="ODNB Regicide">{{Citation | last = Nenner | first = Howard | chapter = Regicides (act. 1649) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | edition = online | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | date = September 2004 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/70599 | accessdate = 16 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/70599}}</ref>|group="nb"}}<ref name="Abbottp158">{{Harvnb|Abbott|2005|p=158}}</ref> His sentence, passed at the ], was pronounced: | |||
In 1676, Joshua Tefft was executed by this method at ] in ]. He was an English colonist who fought on the side of the ] during the ] battle of ]. He may be the only person ever hanged, drawn and quartered in North America. ], leader of the Narragansett, was himself beheaded and quartered, but not hanged, after his death. | |||
{{Quote|That you be led to the place from whence you came, and from thence be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution, and then you shall be hanged by the neck and, being alive, shall be cut down, and your privy members to be cut off, and your entrails be taken out of your body and, you living, the same to be burnt before your eyes, and your head to be cut off, your body to be divided into four quarters, and head and quarters to be disposed of at the pleasure of the King's majesty. And the Lord have mercy on your soul.<ref name="Abbottp158"/>}} | |||
], ] and the Roman Catholic ] of Ireland, was arrested in 1681 and transported to ], London, where he was convicted of treason. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at ], the last Roman Catholic to be executed for his faith in England. He was ] in 1920 and was ] in 1975 by ]. His head is preserved for viewing as a relic in St. Peter's Church in ], while the rest of his body rests in ], near ], ]. | |||
Following a large rebellion against the Crown, only a few of the ringleaders would be hanged, drawn and quartered; most would either be hanged, sent to ], or pardoned. The ] of ] after the ] is a notorious post ] English example, but in the aftermath of rebellions in Ireland and Scotland punishment was often just as ruthless. | |||
Harrison was executed two days later, at ]. After being hanged for several minutes, half-choking, he was cut open. Watched by a large crowd of spectators, including the new king, Harrison reportedly leaned across and hit the executioner—resulting in the swift removal of his own head. His entrails were thrown onto a nearby fire.<ref name="Abbottp158"/> Three days later his head adorned the sled which drew fellow regicide ] to his execution, before later being displayed in Westminster Hall; his quarters were fastened to the city gates.<ref>{{Citation | last = Gentles | first = Ian J. | chapter = Harrison, Thomas (bap. 1616, d. 1660) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2008 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12448 | accessdate = 19 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/12448}}</ref> In all, 13 men were hanged, drawn and quartered for their involvement in Charles's execution.{{#tag:ref|A fourteenth, ], was also executed, but for his religious beliefs, his politics, and his lack of contrition.<ref name="ODNB Regicide"/>|group="nb"}}<ref name="ODNB Regicide"/> Several years after Charles' restoration, about 100 men (including some former parliamentarian soldiers) launched a failed insurrection against the new regime. In what became known as the ], the rebels were arrested and tried, and 26 of them condemned to death. Of those, 16 were hanged, drawn and quartered at York in a single morning, providing, in the words of historian Andrew Hopper, "a spectacle on a scale unseen in the city for nearly a century."<ref>{{Citation | last = Hopper | first = Andrew | chapter = The Farnley Wood Plot and the Memory of the Civil Wars in Yorkshire {{subscription}} | url = http://www.jstor.org/stable/3133646 | publisher = Cambridge University Press, hosted at jstor.org | work = The Historical Journal, No. 2 | volume = 45 | date = June 2002 | pages = 281, 296–297}}</ref> | |||
===From the eighteenth century=== | |||
Nine soldiers from the Manchester Regiment who had taken part in the ] were hanged, drawn and quartered at ], London, on 30 July 1746. | |||
===The Glorious Revolution=== | |||
During the ] (1775–1783), notable captured ]s, such as signers of the ], were theoretically subject to being hanged, drawn and quartered as traitors to the King. (At the signing, ] is quoted as having replied to a comment by ] that they must all hang together: "Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."<ref>{{citation|title=The Life of Benjamin Franklin: Containing the Autobiography, with Notes and a Continuation |first=Jared |last=Sparks |authorlink=Jared Sparks |publisher=Whittemore, Niles and Hall |location=Boston |year=1856 |accessdate=2007-12-16|page=}}</ref>) However, during the war, American sailors and soldiers were treated as prisoners of war, as to do otherwise invited retaliation.<ref>Sheldon Samuel Cohen. ''Yankee Sailors in British Gaols: Prisoners of War at Forton and Mill, 1777-1783'', University of Delaware Press, 1995. ISBN 0874135648, 9780874135640</ref><ref>Jedidiah Morse (1824). ''Annals of the American Revolution: Or, A Record of the Causes and Events which Produced...'', s.n.<!-- Original from Harvard University Digitized 25 Jul 2006 --> </ref> | |||
]]] | |||
] was a victim of the fictitious ], and was hanged, drawn and quartered on 26 November 1678. His quarters were given to his relatives, who promptly arranged a "grand" funeral; this incensed the coroner so much that he ordered the body to be dug up and set upon the city gates. Staley's was the last head to adorn London Bridge.<ref>{{Harvnb|Beadle|Harrison|2008|p=22}}</ref><ref>{{Citation | last1 = Seccombe | first1 = Thomas | last2 = Carr | first2 = Sarah | chapter = Staley , William (d. 1678) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | year = 2004 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26224 | accessdate = 17 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/26224}}</ref> Another victim of the plot, ] ], was arrested on 6 December 1679. He was arraigned at ] in July the following year, but following problems at the trial he was moved to London in October, and arraigned at Westminster Hall on 3 May 1681. Amidst public hysteria over the alleged plot, he was eventually tried on 8 June. He was found guilty, and was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 1 July 1681.<ref>{{Citation | last = Hanly | first = John | chapter = Plunket, Oliver <nowiki></nowiki> (1625–1681) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2006 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22412 | accessdate = 17 Aug 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/22412}}</ref> Plunkett was the last of 105 Catholic martyrs executed there between 1531 and 1681.<ref>{{Harvnb|Moore|Booth|Brandreth|Weigel|2005|pp=45–46}}</ref> | |||
Four years later, following the failed ] of 1685, almost 1,400 rebels involved in the plot to overthrow Charles' brother, ], were charged with treason, and tried during what became known as the ]. In less than a month over 200 of them were hanged, drawn and quartered. Their remains were parboiled, tarred, and displayed on poles, trees and lampposts; only when James conducted a ] through the area were they removed and buried.<ref>{{Harvnb|Zook|1999|p=141}}</ref> James was, however, the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of ], ] and ], ] during the ] of 1688.<!-- not cited but hardly controversial --> During Charles' reign it was made treason to imagine any physical injury to the king, but in 1702, according to the ], the offence was expanded to include interference with the succession. Asserting the right to the throne of anyone outside the line of succession became an offence in 1707. The 1715 ] allowed the government to treat rioters as felons, dispensing with the requirement under the 1351 act to use constructive treason.<ref name="Feildenp5"/> | |||
The penultimate use of the sentence in England was against the French spy ], who was convicted of treason on 23 July 1781. The last occasion was on 24 August 1782 against Scottish spy David Tyrie in ] for carrying on a treasonable correspondence with the French (using information passed to him from officials high in the British government). A contemporary account in the ''Hampshire Chronicle'' describes his being hanged for 22 minutes, following which he was beheaded and his heart cut out and burned. He was then ], quartered, and his body parts were put into a coffin and buried in the pebbles at the seaside. The same account states that, immediately after his burial, sailors dug the coffin up and cut the body into a thousand pieces, each of the sailors taking a piece as a ] to his shipmates.<ref>''Hampshire Chronicle'', Monday, 2 September 1782. Transcript available online: see </ref> Little else is known of his life. | |||
Following the failed ], in which ] attempted to regain the throne for the ], several captured ] officers were hanged, drawn and quartered.<ref>{{Harvnb|Roberts|2002|p=132}}</ref> By then however, it was up to the discretion of the executioner as to how much those being executed should suffer, and thus the rebels were killed before their evisceration.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gatrell|1996|pp=316–317}}</ref> For his part in the uprising, ] was also hanged, drawn and quartered, but in 1753.<ref>{{Citation | last = Turner | first = Roger | chapter = Cameron, Archibald (1707–1753) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2006 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4435 | accessdate = 19 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/4435}}</ref> The French spy ] was executed in 1781, but was hanged for almost an hour before his heart was cut out and burnt.<ref name="Gatrellp317">{{Harvnb|Gatrell|1996|p=317}}</ref> David Tyrie's sentence for passing confidential information to the French resulting in him being hanged, decapitated and quartered at Portsmouth in 1782. Some of the 20,000-strong crowd fought over his corpse, making trophies of his limbs and fingers.<ref>{{Harvnb|Poole|2000|p=76}}</ref> The Catholic priest and ] nationalist ] was convicted of high treason in 1798, but was hanged only.<ref>{{Citation | last = O'Donnell | first = Ruán | chapter = O'Coigly, James (1761–1798) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | year = 2004 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/63597 | accessdate = 19 August 2010 | doi = doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/63597}}</ref> ] was arrested in 1802, apparently planning a '']'', and with six co-conspirators was drawn, hanged and beheaded in front of an audience of about 20,000 at ] in February 1803.<ref>{{Citation | last = Chase | first = Malcolm | chapter = Despard, Edward Marcus (1751–1803) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2009 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7548 | accessdate = 19 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/7548}}</ref> | |||
Irish courts continued to apply the sentence in Dublin. The last execution was of ] on 20 September 1803, who was hanged and then beheaded once dead.<ref></ref> Emmet had led a failed uprising against British rule earlier that year. | |||
] and his six accomplices were sentenced to hanging, drawing and quartering for allegedly plotting to assassinate ] but their sentence was commuted to simple hanging and beheading. | |||
===Later history=== | |||
The ] changed the law so that quartering would happen after death by hanging. | |||
], one of the last people in England sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.]] | |||
The last woman sentenced to be burnt was the counterfeiter ], in 1789. Although she was first hanged to death, her sentence was oppugned in the House of Commons by Sir Benjamin Hammett, who called it one of "the savage remains of Norman policy".<ref name="Gatrellp317"/><ref>{{Harvnb|Shelton|2009|p=88}}</ref> As a result, parliament introduced the ], which, for women guilty of treason, substituted hanging for burning. The ] made it a treasonable offence to intimidate Parliament.<ref name="Feildenp5"/> The ] changed the sentence for high treason to drawing, hanging until dead, and posthumous beheading and quartering.<ref name="Joycep105">{{Harvnb|Joyce|1955|p=105}}</ref> In 1817, amidst high unemployment and poor social conditions, ] led a 100-strong contingent of men in the ], but along with two of his lieutenants, William Turner and Isaac Ludlam, had his sentence reduced to being hanged until dead and then beheaded.<ref>{{Citation | last = Belchem | first = John | chapter = Brandreth, Jeremiah (1786/1790–1817) {{subscription}} | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | year = 2008 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3270 | accessdate = 19 August 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/3270}}</ref> The ], ], later George IV, insisted that the three have their heads removed with an axe, despite appeals to instead use a knife. The three men were hanged at ] for about an hour, before their bodies were removed to a trestle. There a local miner, masked for anonymity, carried out the latter part of the sentence (poorly), but as he held the first head high and made the customary announcement, the crowd reacted with horror and fled. In 1820, amidst more social unrest, five ] participants were hanged and beheaded. This time however, the crowd reacted with anger when the corpses' heads were removed, and the executioners were forced to find safety behind the walls of Newgate Prison.<ref>{{Harvnb|Abbott|2005|pp=161–162}}</ref> Three men involved in the ] ] of November 1839 were sentenced to be hanged, decapitated and quartered in January 1840, but following a nationwide petition and lobbying of the Home Secretary by the Chief Justice, their sentence was commuted to ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Chase|2007|pp=137–140}}</ref> | |||
Petty treason was abolished in 1828,<ref>{{Harvnb|Dubber|2005|p=27}}</ref> but hanging, drawing and quartering was finally rendered obsolete in England by the ], which limited the death penalty for treason to hanging alone; although the 1814 Act allowed for the monarch to substitute beheading for hanging.<ref name="Joycep105"/> | |||
In 1817, the three leaders of the ], convicted of high treason, suffered hanging and beheading only. | |||
==Overseas== | |||
In 1820, ] and other participants in the ] were condemned to this punishment, though the court record shows that the drawing and quartering was omitted from the completion of the sentence. The sentence was passed on the Irish rebel leader ] in 1848 but commuted to ]. | |||
The 1351 treason act also applied to those subjects overseas in ]. Although some executions for treason were performed in the provinces of ] and ], only two people were hanged, drawn and quartered; one in Virginia in 1630, and another in ]. Further sentences were issued in the late 18th century but all were either pardoned or simply hanged.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ward|2009|p=56}}</ref> | |||
==References== | |||
In ] (now ]), David McLane was hanged, drawn and quartered on 21 July 1797 for treason; however, Hangman Ward let McLane hang for 28 minutes. This ensured he was not alive to suffer the disembowelling, decapitation and quartering part of the sentence. Ignace Vailliancourt was "hanged, dissected and anatomized" on 7 March 1803 for murder; however, part of the sentence was that his body "be delivered to Dr. Charles Blake for dissection", so this was likely not a true drawing and quartering.<ref></ref> During the ], in May 1814 at Ancaster, ] (now ]), Attorney General John Beverley Robinson<ref>]</ref> orchestrated a show trial to discourage any tendencies to join with the American side in the war because many residents of Upper Canada were immigrants from the American Colonies or closely related to Americans. The judges indicted 71 traitors and sentenced 17 to be hanged, drawn and quartered. They finally pardoned nine, hanged eight and quartered none.<ref>citation needed, web reference has been removed, available in 1 June 2007</ref> | |||
;Footnotes | |||
{{reflist|group="nb"}} | |||
;Notes | |||
Drawing and quartering were abolished in 1870. | |||
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}} | |||
;Bibliography | |||
A letter to the London Review of Books, February 12, 2009, p. 4, from a Bill Gilmour refers to three people being hanged, drawn and quartered in Scotland in 1820. Gilmour notes that the punishment remained on the statute book until 1947. | |||
{{refbegin}} | |||
*{{Citation | last = Abbott | first = Geoffrey | title = Execution, a Guide to the Ultimate Penalty | publisher = Summersdale Publishers Ltd. | location = Chichester, West Sussex | year = 2005 | origyear = 1994 | isbn = 184024433X}} | |||
*{{Citation | last1 = Beadle | first1 = Jeremy | last2 = Harrison | first2 = Ian | title = Firsts, Lasts & Onlys: Crime | url = http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CQdOF2zxlGgC | publisher = Anova Books | location = London | year = 2008 | isbn = 1905798040}} | |||
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{{refend}} | |||
===Further reading=== | |||
==Details of the crime== | |||
{{refbegin}} | |||
{{main|High treason in the United Kingdom}} | |||
*{{Citation | last = Andrews | first = William | title = Old-Time Punishments | url = http://www.archive.org/details/oldtimepunishmen00andruoft | publisher = William Andrews & Co. | location = Hull | year = 1890}} | |||
The crime of ''treason'', or ''offences against the crown'' is often thought of in terms of attempted regicides, such as ] and others mentioned above. However, the crime was interpreted at different periods of English history to include a variety of acts which, at the time, were deemed to threaten the constitutional authority of the monarchy. | |||
*{{Citation | last = Bellamy | first = John G. | title = The Tudor Law of Treason: an Introduction | publisher = Taylor & Francis | year = 1979 | isbn = 0802022669}} | |||
*{{Citation | last1 = Block | first1 = Brian P. | last2 = Hostettler | first2 = John | title = Hanging in the balance: a history of the abolition of capital punishment in Britain | url = http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wlonYyuDZS4C | publisher = Waterside Press | year = 1997 | isbn = 1872870473}} | |||
For example, on 12 December 1674, William Burnet was condemned to this punishment for offences against the king: namely that he "had often endeavoured to reconcile divers of his Majesties Protestant subjects to the Romish Church, and had actually perverted several to embrace the Roman Catholique Religion, and assert and maintain the Pope's supremacy." In other words, he had come to England and attempted to convert ] to ]. In a similar vein, John Morgan was also sentenced to this punishment on 30 April 1679, for having received orders from the ], and coming to England: there being "very good Evidence that proved he was a Priest, and had said Mass". | |||
*{{Citation | last = Hamburger | first = Philip | title = Law and judicial duty | url = http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bMjcCNND9AkC | publisher = Harvard University Press | year = 2008 | isbn = 0674031318}} | |||
{{refend}} | |||
On the same day in 1679, two other people were found guilty of offences against the king, at the Old Bailey. In this case, they had been "Coyning and Counterfeiting". Again, they were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. In a similar case on 15 October 1690, Thomas Rogers and Anne Rogers were tried for "Clipping 40 pieces of Silver" (in other words, clipping the edges off silver coins). Thomas Rogers was hanged, drawn and quartered and Anne Rogers was burned alive. | |||
] mentions in his ''History of Pleas of the Crown'' that although sometimes people were sentenced to this punishment for counterfeiting coins, this sentence was in fact unlawful, as the proper sentence for this kind of treason omitted quartering.<ref>, (from ]).</ref> | |||
==Similar, lesser punishments for treason== | |||
Men convicted of the lesser crime of ] were dragged to the place of execution and hanged until dead, but not subsequently dismembered.{{Citation needed|date=June 2007}} Women convicted of treason or petty treason were ]. | |||
==Class distinctions in its application== | |||
In Britain, this penalty was usually reserved for commoners, including knights. Noble traitors were beheaded, a much less painful punishment, at first by sword and in later years by axe. The different treatment of lords and commoners was clear after the ]: lowly-born ] and ] were hanged, drawn, and quartered at ], while their fellow rebellion leader ] was beheaded at ]. | |||
However, this class distinction was not applied in the Second Scottish War of Independence when many noblemen suffered this form of execution including three of the brothers of King Robert the Bruce and his brother-in-law Sir Christopher Seton who were all members of the nobility.<ref>Ronald McNair Scott, Robert the Bruce, p. 90</ref> | |||
This class distinction was brought out in a ] debate of 1680, with regard to the Warrant of Execution of ], which had condemned him to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Sir ] is quoted as saying "Death is the substance of the Judgment; the manner of it is but a circumstance.... No man can show me an example of a Nobleman that has been quartered for High-Treason: They have been only beheaded". The House then resolved that "Execution be done upon Lord Stafford, by severing his Head from his Body".<ref>Anchitell Grey, ''Grey's Debates of the House of Commons: volume 8'', London, 1769. Online at </ref> | |||
==Religious considerations== | |||
Dismemberment of the body after death was seen by many contemporaries as a way of punishing the traitor beyond the grave. In western European Christian countries, it was ordinarily considered contrary to the dignity of the human body to mutilate it. A Parliamentary Act from the reign of ] stipulated that only the corpses of executed murderers could be used for dissection. Being thus dismembered was viewed as an extra punishment not suitable for others. There are cases on record where murderers would try to plead guilty to another capital offence so that, although they would be hanged, their body would be buried whole and not be dissected. | |||
Attitudes towards this issue changed very slowly in Britain and were not manifested in law until the passing of the ] in 1832. Respect for the dead is still a sensitive issue in Britain as can be seen by the furore over the "]" when the organs of deceased children were kept without their parents' informed consent.<ref> by David Batty and Jane Perrone Friday 27 April 2001 in '']''</ref> | |||
==Eyewitness accounts== | |||
], London]] | |||
An account is provided by the diary of ] for Saturday 13 October 1660, in which he describes his attendance at the execution of Major-General ] for the ] of ]. The complete diary entry for the day, given below, illustrates the matter-of-fact way in which the execution is treated by Pepys: | |||
{{quotation|To my Lord's in the morning, where I met with Captain Cuttance, but my Lord not being up I went out to ], to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy. It is said, that he said that he was sure to come shortly at the right hand of Christ to judge them that now had judged him; and that his wife do expect his coming again. Thus it was my chance to see the King beheaded at ], and to see the first blood shed in revenge for the blood of the King at Charing Cross. From thence to my Lord's, and took Captain Cuttance and Mr. Sheply to the Sun Tavern, and did give them some oysters. After that I went by water home, where I was angry with my wife for her things lying about, and in my passion kicked the little fine basket, which I bought her in Holland, and broke it, which troubled me after I had done it. Within all the afternoon setting up shelves in my study. At night to bed.<ref>] and William Matthews (editors) ''The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Volume I. Introduction and 1660'', Bell & Hyman, London, 1970. ISBN 0-7135-1551-1</ref>}} | |||
At 26-27 Great Tower Street, ], London, there is a pub called "The Hung Drawn and Quartered". On the wall is the altered quotation from ], shown above. The pub is close to the site of several executions, but not to ]. | |||
==Similar techniques in other countries== | |||
===China=== | |||
{{See also|Slow slicing}} | |||
The Chinese quartering was similar to the French version and was used as a form of ] for crimes such as ] or ]. The subject would have his limbs and head tied to five horses/]s in a ]. The horses/chariots would then be sent speeding off in different directions away from the subject, causing the limbs and head to be ripped off and death by ] resulted. The punishment was officially termed as ''Chelie'' ({{zh|c=車裂|l=chariot breaking}}) and was colloquially referred to as ''Wuma Fenshi'' ({{zh|c=五馬分屍|l=dismemberment by five horses}}). Another variant of the Chinese quartering, also resulting in death by dismemberment, was called "]" or ''Lingchi'' ({{zh|c=凌遲}}), in which the subject's body is dismembered by slicing with knives. It was more common in the ] and ].<ref>''Shiji'', vol.27</ref><ref>''Shiji'', vol.68</ref> Dismemberment by horse-pulling became less usual than cutting. ] abolished it in AD 965.<ref>'']'', vol.7</ref> But in ] such tortures were still carried out. ] ordered to quarter ] into eight pieces.<ref></ref><ref>]. ''Liechao shiji'', vol.21</ref> ] abolished it after report of quartering of an official.<ref></ref><ref>]. '']'', vol.1, ch.18</ref><ref></ref> | |||
===Denmark=== | |||
The practice was also used in ]. | |||
* ] and Enevold Brandt were drawn and quartered on April 28, 1772. | |||
===France=== | |||
In France, the traditional punishment for ] (whether attempted or completed) under the ] (known in French as {{lang|fr|''écartèlement''}}) is often described as "quartering", though it in fact has little to do with the English punishment. The process was as follows: the regicide offender would be first tortured with red-hot pincers, then the hand with which the crime was committed would be burned, with ], molten ], ], and ] poured into the wounds. The quartering would be accomplished by the attachment of the condemned's limbs to horses, who would then ]. Finally, the often still-living torso would be burned. Notable examples include: | |||
* ] (quartered by horses in 1583), son of a noble Spaniard killed in the ] and a French noblewoman, who organized an attempt at killing the king's brother ] | |||
* ], who attempted to assassinate ] | |||
* ] (1578 – 27 May 1610) was the murderer of King Henry IV of France and was punished by being "scalded with burning sulphur, molten lead and boiling oil and resin, his flesh then being torn by pincers ..." before he was drawn and quartered. | |||
* ], who attempted the assassination of ] in 1757. (At least two prominent 20th-century ] this execution.) | |||
* ], the murderer of ]. (He was killed in this act of regicide, and ] to the same "punishment".) | |||
These executions were carried out (along with most others under the ancien régime) in the ]. | |||
* ], assassin of ], after two days of intense ]. | |||
Gérard's execution took place on the market square in ], ]. | |||
===Netherlands=== | |||
The Dutch quartering was similar to the French version and was used as a form of ] for crimes such as ] or ]. The murderer of ], one ], was quartered with the aid of four horses and a little help with an axe, in ]. | |||
===Poland=== | |||
The quartering was a quite usual qualified method of capital punishment in ] for revolt and high treason in early Modern Age. | |||
* A ] ] revolt leader ] was quartered in ] in 1597. | |||
* In 1620 a Polish ] nobleman ] (the coat of arms of ]) was quartered using horses for attempted ] of ] of Poland. The king was saved by ] ] (the coat of arms of ]). | |||
* In 1702 the Ukrainian nobleman, writer, ] spokesman ] was quartered in city of ] for supporting a ] revolt. | |||
* In 1768 the ] leader ] was sentenced to be ] over a period of 14 days, then to be quartered after death. According the Artillery General of Lithuania, Count ], Gonta was beheaded after three days of torture and then quartered. | |||
===Russia=== | |||
:''See also: ]''. | |||
In Russia, quartering ({{lang|ru|четвертование}}) or division into five parts ({{lang|ru|пятирение}}, according Prince ], a Russian ] author), referred to a punishment in which the executioner severed the limbs one by one, and then decapitated the convict. It was a common punishment for mutiny or rebellion until the beginning of 18th century. | |||
Men who were quartered in Russia include: | |||
*], an ] after the ] in 1653 | |||
*] in 1671 and his brother ] in 1671 or 1672, leaders of Cossack uprising (whether Frol Razin was actually executed is disputed) | |||
*] ], a member of the ], Colonel of the ] ] and ] ] for high treason and conspiracy to commit regicide in 1697 | |||
*] and ] in 1775, leaders of a Cossack uprising. <!-- (What is this? 30 years in prison, then execution? - not, in 1742 in Russia was declared the death punishment abolation)It was capital punishment after 30 years of declared --> This case of capital punishment was not usual, as Empress ] had declared a moratorium on capital punishment in 1742. The only other exceptions to this rule were the decapitation of Lieutenant ] in 1764 for high treason and the hanging of the activists who incited the ] in 1771, which resulted in the death of the Archbishop of Moscow. According the oral order of Empress ], Pugachov and Perfilyev were quartered after decapitation. | |||
The problem of political crime in Russia in the early ] and the punishment for it is discussed in a work of the Russian modern historian, Professor ] "Dyba (the ]) and ]" which was published in 1999 in Russian. | |||
Five activists of the ] in 1826 were sentenced by an extraordinary "Supreme" Court to be quartered but were executed by hanging after royal clemency was extended. | |||
==In literature and popular culture== | |||
*]'s play '']'' features the discovery of the ] to kill ] before he sailed to France. Two of the conspirators (Henry, Lord Scroop of Masham, and ]) were nobles and were beheaded; ], Knight of Northumberland, was drawn and quartered. | |||
*In ]'s fantasy novels ''The Farseer Trilogy'' and ''The Tawny Man Trilogy'', villagers accused of being able to talk to animals are hanged, quartered, and burned. | |||
*]' '']'' refers to the possibility of ] being drawn and quartered as a punishment if he were convicted of treason. | |||
*The historical execution of the attempted regicide ], including ], drew prominent late-20th-century attention: | |||
** In the 1963 play '']'', the playwright ] has his imagined version of the ] describe it with relish. | |||
** A decade later, ] described and discussed it in the introduction of his ''Surveiller et Punir'' ('']''). | |||
*In the 1995 film '']'', ], portrayed by ], is depicted being hanged, drawn and quartered in 1305 for his role in the Scottish rebellion against ], although the executioner beheads him because of his bravery before he dies of quartering. | |||
* In Diana Gabaldon's ] series, to draw, hang and quarter is described as a punishment for treason, threatened against ]. | |||
*In the film Ghostbusters II it is mentioned that Vigo the Carpathian was drawn and quartered amongst a wide array of other methods of being executed. | |||
==See also== | |||
*] | |||
*] | |||
==Notes== | |||
{{reflist}} | |||
==External links== | |||
* | |||
* | |||
* | |||
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Revision as of 15:50, 8 January 2011
To be hanged, drawn and quartered (sometimes rendered hung, drawn and quartered) was from 1351 the penalty in England for men guilty of high treason, although its use is first recorded during the reign of King Henry III and that of his successor, Edward I. The convicted were fastened to a wooden hurdle which was dragged by horse to the place of execution. Once there, they were ritually hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded and quartered (chopped into four pieces). As a warning against further dissent, these remains were often displayed at prominent places, such as London Bridge. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were burnt at the stake.
Although some convicts had their sentences commuted and suffered a less ignominious end, over a period of several hundred years many men found guilty of treason endured the full sanction of the law. Many notable figures were subjected to the punishment, including over 100 English Catholic priests executed at Tyburn. Plotters engaged in religious conspiracies like the Gunpowder Plot were killed this way, as were some of the regicides involved in sentencing Charles I to death. During the 1685 Bloody Assizes, several hundred rebels were dispatched by this method in less than a month.
Although the Act of Parliament that defined high treason remains on the United Kingdom's statute books, hanging, drawing and quartering was in 1814 downgraded to drawing, hanging until dead, and posthumous beheading and quartering. It was finally abolished in England in 1870.
Treason in England
The first recorded instance of a person being hanged, drawn and quartered in England is that of William Maurice, who in 1241, during Henry III's reign, was convicted of piracy. However, the punishment is more frequently recorded during Edward I's reign. Dafydd ap Gruffydd was the first nobleman in England to receive the sentence. He had previously fought alongside Edward, but in 1282 he turned against the king, and on the death of his brother proclaimed himself Prince of Wales and Lord of Snowdon. He was captured, tried and executed in 1283; his quarters were distributed across the country, while his head was placed atop the Tower of London. The Scottish rebel leader William Wallace suffered a similar fate. Captured and tried in 1305, he was strapped to a hurdle and dragged by horse through the streets of London, to the scaffold at Smithfield. Along the way he was whipped and hit by the spectators, who also threw rotten food and waste at him. After being hanged, and while still alive, he was emasculated and eviscerated. He was then beheaded and quartered. His preserved head (dipped in pitch) was placed on a spike on London Bridge (the first to appear there), while his arms and legs were displayed at various towns across England and Scotland.
These and other executions (such as those of Andrew Harclay, 1st Earl of Carlisle and Hugh Despenser the Younger) happened when acts of treason in England, and their punishments, were not clearly defined in common law. Treason was based on an allegiance to the sovereign from all subjects aged 14 or over, and it remained for the king and his judges to determine if that allegiance had been broken. The Treason Act of 1351, passed in the 25th year of Edward III's reign and still in force today, was an attempt to resolve this ambiguity. It was enacted at a time in English history when a monarch's right to rule was indisputable, and was therefore written principally to protect the throne and sovereign. The act split the old feudal offence of treason into two classes. Petty treason referred to the killing of a master (or lord) by his servant, a husband by his wife, or a prelate by his clergyman. Men guilty of petty treason were drawn and hanged, while women were burnt.
High treason
High treason was the most egregious offence an individual could commit, seen as a direct threat to the king's right to govern. Attempts to undermine his authority were viewed with as much seriousness as if the accused had made a direct assault on his body, which itself would be an attack on his status as sovereign. As such an attack could potentially undermine the state, retribution was considered an absolute necessity, for which the ultimate punishment was required. The practical difference between the two offences therefore was in the consequence of being convicted; rather than being drawn and hanged, men were to be hanged, drawn and quartered, while for reasons of public decency (their anatomy being considered inappropriate for the sentence), women were instead drawn and burnt. The act declared that a person was committing high treason if engaged in one of the following seven offences:
- compassing or imagining the death of the king, his wife or his eldest son and heir,
- violating the king's wife, his eldest daughter if she was unmarried, or the wife of his eldest son and heir,
- levying war against the king in his realm,
- adhering to the king's enemies in his realm, giving them aid and comfort in his realm or elsewhere;
- counterfeiting the Great Seal or the Privy Seal, or the king's coinage,
- knowingly importing counterfeit money,
- killing the Chancellor, Treasurer or one of the king's Justices while performing their offices.
However, the act also contains the proviso:
And because many other cases of like treason, may happen in time to come, which a man cannot think or declare at this present time; It is accorded, that if any other case, supposed treason, which is not above specified, doth happen anew before any justices, the justices shall tarry without going to judgement of treason, till the case be showed before the king and his parliament, and it be declared whether it ought to be judged treason or other felony.
Therefore it did not fully constrain the monarch's authority to define the scope of treason, and gave English judges discretion to extend it whenever required—otherwise known as constructive treason.
The sentence
Only one witness was required to convict a person of treason, although in 1552 this was increased to two. Suspects were first questioned in private by the Privy Council. At the public trial, defendants were allowed no witnesses and no defence counsel, and were generally presumed guilty from the outset. This system remained in place until the Treason Act of 1695 was passed, allowing defendants counsel, witnesses, a copy of their indictment, and a jury. When not charged with an attempt on the monarch's life, they were to be prosecuted within three years of the alleged offence.
After being sentenced, malefactors were usually held in prison for a few days before being drawn by horse to the place of execution, usually on a hurdle, their hands tied. Once stripped of their clothing, they were taken to the scaffold and hanged for a short period, but only to cause strangulation and near-death. They were then disembowelled, and normally emasculated. Those still conscious at this point might have seen their entrails burnt, before their heart was removed. The body was then decapitated, signalling an unquestionable death, and quartered (chopped into four pieces). Each dismembered piece of the body was later displayed publicly, as a warning to others.
After Wallace, the heads of the executed were often displayed on London Bridge, for centuries the route by which many travellers from the south entered the city. On occasion accompanied by the parboiled quarters of executed men, such gruesome trophies served as a more permanent reminder of the penalty for treason. Several eminent commentators remarked on the displays; in 1566 Joseph Justus Scaliger wrote that "in London there were many heads on the bridge ... I have seen there, as if they were masts of ships, and at the top of them, quarters of men's corpses", and in 1602 the Duke of Stettin emphasised the ominous nature of their presence when he wrote "near the end of the bridge, on the suburb side, were stuck up the heads of thirty gentlemen of high standing who had been beheaded on account of treason and secret practices against the Queen".
Some confusion exists over the meaning of the term hanged, drawn and quartered. One of the Oxford English Dictionary's definitions of draw is "to draw out the viscera or intestines of; to disembowel (a fowl, etc. before cooking, a traitor or other criminal after hanging)", but is followed by the postscript "in many cases of executions it is uncertain whether this, or sense 4 , is meant. The presumption is that where drawn is mentioned after hanged, the sense is as here." Author S. R. Sharma arrives at the same conclusion: "Where, as in the popular hung, drawn and quartered (meaning, facetiously, of a person, completely disposed of), drawn follows hanged or hung, it is to be referred to as the disembowelling of the traitor." However, the historian and author Ian Mortimer disagrees. In an essay published on his website, he writes that the separate mention of evisceration is a relatively modern device, and that while it certainly took place on many occasions, the presumption that drawing means to disembowel is spurious. Instead, drawing (as a method of transportation) may be mentioned after hanging because it was a supplementary part of the execution.
Before they were hanged, prisoners normally gave a public speech, expressing their remorse and asking for forgiveness. This was a form of ritual cleansing, illustrated by one example where a young man already on the ladder, refusing to believe that he had been forgiven by God, was called back down by the Puritan clergyman William Perkins. The clergyman managed to convince him that he had been forgiven, and the youth reportedly went to his death "with tears of joy in his eyes ... as if he actually saw himself delivered from the hell which he feared before, and heaven opened for receiving his soul".
Robbing of honour
Maeve JonesThe sentence of hanging, drawing, and quartering punished the guilty traitor via his body. Although gruesome and cruel by today's standards, the practice was a logical legal mechanism that reflected complex conceptual understandings of the time. It magnified and inverted the crime perpetrated on the integrity of the king by mutilating and completely destroying the physical body of the traitor. Various steps involved in the penalty worked to stamp the authority of the monarch on the criminal and to purge the threat by marking the dishonour of the condemned. Central to this punishment was the understanding that the physical body and individual were inextricably intertwined even immediately after death. Therefore, it followed that the penalty should operate by targeting the body.
According to history student Maeve Jones's essay on high treason, each step of the procedure marked a rite of passage and the "progressive robbing of honour from the offender". Dragging was a form of transport usually reserved for carcasses and other low-value goods, and served to humiliate the offender. Removing their clothing stripped them of their social status. Several purposes were served by the criminal's mutilation. In the case of Hugh Despenser the Younger, his hanging was punishment for theft: "that you are found as a thief, and therefore shall be hanged". For being a traitor, he was quartered, and for being an outlaw he was beheaded. For coming between the king and queen he was disembowelled, and his organs burnt. In the opinion of Professor Robert Kastenbaum, Hugh's mutilation (presuming that his disembowelment was post-mortem) was a reminder to the crowd that dissent was not tolerated. The corpse became so unrecognisable to them that any compassion was unlikely, and even in the afterlife, God might no longer want Hugh—a view which lingered for centuries, exemplified by the controversy surrounding the dissection of corpses for anatomy. Quartering the corpse might also remove any prospect of funereal support, as relatives had to wait until the spiked remains had decomposed before they were allowed to bury them. Since relatives were normally responsible for taking care of a recently departed family member, denying them a funeral in this way spread the traitor's shame onto his family. Kastenbaum also suggests that burning the viscera might also have been to expel any evil spirits contained within. Jones writes that the evisceration of an offender while conscious did not just mark his public disgrace; the intimacy of the executioner's method also highlighted the offender's submission to legitimate authority. The burning of his organs may have been a supplementary form of torture, a method of prolonging his agony.
Use in England
This section provides several notable examples of when the sentence was used, in what context, and how treason law was modified to suit. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of those people hanged, drawn and quartered.
Plantagenets
Also introduced in 1351 was the Statute of Labourers. This and other social grievances including the Black Death, were instrumental in prompting the 1381 Peasants' Revolt. Its leader, Wat Tyler, was killed in June 1381 at Smithfield, during a meeting with the young King Richard II. The Lollard priest John Ball, also involved in the uprising, immediately fled, but was captured less than a month later. He was hanged, drawn and quartered on 15 July. The uprising led to a change in the law in 1382, making it treason to start a riot. The law was again changed with the Treason Act 1397.
Richard had succeeded to the throne while still a child, and in the ensuing power struggles between his advisers Thomas Usk was one of those who fell foul of court politics. He was accused of misleading the young king, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered in 1388. Soon after Richard was deposed by Henry IV, Owain Glyndŵr, a Welshman loyal to Richard, became the leader of the Glyndŵr Rising, subsequently defeating Henry's army at the Battle of Mynydd Hyddgen. Henry responded by bringing up from Worcester a large army to capture Owain. Llywelyn ap Gruffydd Fychan was pressured into his service, but as a loyal patriot, and with two sons in Owain's army, he led the king in the wrong direction. This allowed Owain to escape, and when in 1401 Llywelyn admitted to Henry what he had done, the king had him disembowelled and dismembered at Llandovery Castle.
At the start of Edward IV's reign in 1461, John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester, was appointed to the king's council. He became constable of the Tower of London, and the following year was made Constable of England, with authority to try all cases of treason. He was responsible for many executions, but the hanging, drawing and quartering of 20 of the earl of Warwick's men provoked strong public condemnation, and when Edward fled the country to be replaced by Henry VI, Tiptoft was arraigned and condemned for high treason. He was beheaded on Tower Hill, in October 1470.
Tudor England
During Henry VII's reign treason law was again modified, on this occasion making it possible to commit treason only against the de facto king, and not de jure. Between 1533 and 1540, Henry VII's son, Henry VIII, took control of the English Church from Rome, the start of years of religious tension in England. The eighth Henry made it treason to ignore a legal summons to surrender, or to injure the king, or even to wish him injury. One also could not call the king a heretic or deny his royal titles, and in 1535 therefore the Carthusian priest John Houghton and four of his colleagues were dragged to Tyburn to be executed, when Houghton refused to swear the recently enacted Oath of Supremacy. Houghton said on the scaffold: "Our holy mother the Church has decreed otherwise than the king and parliament have decreed. I am therefore bound in conscience and am ready and willing to suffer every kind of torture rather than deny a doctrine of the Church". The execution is recorded in the Catholic archives:
Then he cut open his belly, dragged out his bowels, his heart and all else, and threw them into a fire, during which our blessed Father not only did not cry out on account of the intolerable pain, but on the contrary during all this time until his heart was torn out, prayed continually, to the wonder not only of the presiding officer but of all the people who witnessed it. Being at his last gasp, and nearly disembowelled, he said to his tormentor while in the act of tearing out his heart, "Good Jesu, what will you do with my heart?" and saying this, he expired. And lastly his head was cut off and the beheaded body was divided into four parts, the remains thrown into cauldrons and parboiled, and put up at different places in the city. And one arm of our Father was suspended over the gate of our Carthusians' house.
Henry later made it treasonous to deny the validity of his marriage to Anne Boleyn, and later still made it an offence to maintain the validity of the same marriage. His union later with Katherine Howard proved lethal for Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper, after it was discovered that they each had carnal knowledge of Katherine. Both men were executed in November 1541. Culpeper was drawn on a hurdle to Tyburn and beheaded there, in itself unusual since most beheadings were carried out at Tower Hill. There was nothing to distinguish Dereham's punishment however, as he was hanged, drawn and quartered in the same place. Katherine was deprived of her queenship, and was beheaded in February the following year. Many of Henry's modifications to treason law were repealed but then re-enacted by Henry's son and heir, Edward VI, who also made it treason for more than 12 people to meet and discuss state affairs. Edward died a young man, however, and was succeeded by his half-sister, Mary I, who removed the changes from the statute books. Mary also attempted to return England to Catholicism, but her marriage in 1554 to Philip II of Spain proved to be deeply unpopular, so much so that it was made treasonous to pray for her death, or to preach against Philip's title as king. Her marriage prompted Thomas Wyatt the younger to rebel against the union, but the rising failed and consequently he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. This was commuted to beheading; his head was later exhibited on a gallows near Berkeley Square, while his quarters were displayed at various places across the city. As many as 400 rebels may have been killed for their involvement in the uprising. Also caught in the aftermath was William Thomas, a Welsh scholar accused by some of the rebels of planning to murder the queen. He was hanged, drawn and quartered in May that year. His head was placed on London Bridge, and the rest of his body at Cripplegate.
Mary was succeeded to the throne by her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth I. One of her first acts was the 1559 Act of Supremacy, which amongst other things made denying her title an act of treason. Further acts, such as the Bulls, etc., from Rome Act, increased the number of offences by which an individual could be tried for treason. English Catholics struggled in a society dominated by the newly separate and increasingly Protestant Church of England. Elizabeth's response to the growing religious and political divide was to increase the severity of anti-Catholic legislation, with stiff penalties exacted on those who refused to comply. Priests such as Cuthbert Mayne and Edmund Campion, two of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, fell foul of these laws and were hanged, drawn and quartered. Other Tudor conspiracies, such as the Babington plot, resulted in further executions:
John Ballard a preest, and first persuader of Babington to these odious treasons, was laid aloue vpon an hurdell, and six others two and two in like sort, all drawne from Tower hill through the citie of London, untu a field at the vpper end of Holborne, hard by the high waie side to saint Giles in the field, where was erected a scaffold for their execution, and a paire of gallows of extraordinarie hight ... and although the thousands were thought (and indeed so seemed) to be numberlesse: yet somewhat to note the huge multitude, there were by computation able men enow to giue battell to a strong enimie ... On the first daie the traitors were placed vpon the scaffold, that the one might behold the reward of his fellowes treason. Ballard the preest, who was the first brocher of this treason, was the first that was hanged, who being cut downe (according to judgement) was dismembred, his bellie ript up, his bowels and traitorous heart taken out and throwne into the fire, his head also (seuered from his shoulders) was set on a short stake vpon the top of the gallows, and the trunke of his bodie quartered and imbrued in his owne bloud, wherewith the executioners hands were bathed, and some of the standers by (but to their great loathing, as not able for their liues to auoid it, such was the throng) beesprinkled.
The Stuart era and English Interregnum
For their part in the Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy to kill Elizabeth's successor James I and replace him with a Catholic monarch, from 30–31 January 1606 the surviving eight Catholic conspirators were hanged, drawn and quartered. The most notorious, Guy Fawkes, managed to cheat the executioner by jumping from the scaffold while his head was in the noose, breaking his neck. His lifeless body was nevertheless drawn and quartered, and his body parts distributed to "the four corners of the kingdom".
Use of the sentence continued through the English Interregnum. John Southworth was the only Catholic priest executed during the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, and the last person executed simply for being a priest in England. Arrested on 19 June 1654, he was tried before the common serjeant, and not the high court of justice (which had sole jurisdiction over treasons), meaning that he was probably executed under an earlier conviction. He refused to deny that he was a priest, an option which might have saved his life. Foreign ambassadors pleaded on his behalf, but unlike the kings and queens before him Cromwell had no authority to pardon the priest, who was to be hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 28 June. Instead Cromwell ordered that surgeons be present at his execution, to sew the corpse back together so that it could be sent to Douai College for burial. Exhumed when the college was demolished, it is the only corpse of an English Catholic martyr to have survived into modern times.
With the restoration to the throne of Charles II, Major-General Thomas Harrison, a Fifth Monarchist and regicide who helped sentence Charles's father Charles I to death, was himself executed for high treason. His sentence, passed at the Old Bailey, was pronounced:
That you be led to the place from whence you came, and from thence be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution, and then you shall be hanged by the neck and, being alive, shall be cut down, and your privy members to be cut off, and your entrails be taken out of your body and, you living, the same to be burnt before your eyes, and your head to be cut off, your body to be divided into four quarters, and head and quarters to be disposed of at the pleasure of the King's majesty. And the Lord have mercy on your soul.
Harrison was executed two days later, at Charing Cross. After being hanged for several minutes, half-choking, he was cut open. Watched by a large crowd of spectators, including the new king, Harrison reportedly leaned across and hit the executioner—resulting in the swift removal of his own head. His entrails were thrown onto a nearby fire. Three days later his head adorned the sled which drew fellow regicide John Cooke to his execution, before later being displayed in Westminster Hall; his quarters were fastened to the city gates. In all, 13 men were hanged, drawn and quartered for their involvement in Charles's execution. Several years after Charles' restoration, about 100 men (including some former parliamentarian soldiers) launched a failed insurrection against the new regime. In what became known as the Farnley Wood Plot, the rebels were arrested and tried, and 26 of them condemned to death. Of those, 16 were hanged, drawn and quartered at York in a single morning, providing, in the words of historian Andrew Hopper, "a spectacle on a scale unseen in the city for nearly a century."
The Glorious Revolution
William Staley was a victim of the fictitious Popish Plot, and was hanged, drawn and quartered on 26 November 1678. His quarters were given to his relatives, who promptly arranged a "grand" funeral; this incensed the coroner so much that he ordered the body to be dug up and set upon the city gates. Staley's was the last head to adorn London Bridge. Another victim of the plot, Archbishop of Armagh Oliver Plunket, was arrested on 6 December 1679. He was arraigned at Dundalk in July the following year, but following problems at the trial he was moved to London in October, and arraigned at Westminster Hall on 3 May 1681. Amidst public hysteria over the alleged plot, he was eventually tried on 8 June. He was found guilty, and was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 1 July 1681. Plunkett was the last of 105 Catholic martyrs executed there between 1531 and 1681.
Four years later, following the failed Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, almost 1,400 rebels involved in the plot to overthrow Charles' brother, King James II, were charged with treason, and tried during what became known as the Bloody Assizes. In less than a month over 200 of them were hanged, drawn and quartered. Their remains were parboiled, tarred, and displayed on poles, trees and lampposts; only when James conducted a progress through the area were they removed and buried. James was, however, the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, abdicating during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. During Charles' reign it was made treason to imagine any physical injury to the king, but in 1702, according to the Act of Settlement, the offence was expanded to include interference with the succession. Asserting the right to the throne of anyone outside the line of succession became an offence in 1707. The 1715 Riot Act allowed the government to treat rioters as felons, dispensing with the requirement under the 1351 act to use constructive treason.
Following the failed Jacobite Rising of 1745, in which Charles Edward Stuart attempted to regain the throne for the House of Stuart, several captured Jacobite officers were hanged, drawn and quartered. By then however, it was up to the discretion of the executioner as to how much those being executed should suffer, and thus the rebels were killed before their evisceration. For his part in the uprising, Archibald Cameron was also hanged, drawn and quartered, but in 1753. The French spy François Henri de la Motte was executed in 1781, but was hanged for almost an hour before his heart was cut out and burnt. David Tyrie's sentence for passing confidential information to the French resulting in him being hanged, decapitated and quartered at Portsmouth in 1782. Some of the 20,000-strong crowd fought over his corpse, making trophies of his limbs and fingers. The Catholic priest and Irish nationalist James Coigly was convicted of high treason in 1798, but was hanged only. Edward Despard was arrested in 1802, apparently planning a coup d'état, and with six co-conspirators was drawn, hanged and beheaded in front of an audience of about 20,000 at Horsemonger Lane Gaol in February 1803.
Later history
The last woman sentenced to be burnt was the counterfeiter Catherine Murphy, in 1789. Although she was first hanged to death, her sentence was oppugned in the House of Commons by Sir Benjamin Hammett, who called it one of "the savage remains of Norman policy". As a result, parliament introduced the Treason Act of 1790, which, for women guilty of treason, substituted hanging for burning. The Treason Act of 1795 made it a treasonable offence to intimidate Parliament. The Treason Act of 1814 changed the sentence for high treason to drawing, hanging until dead, and posthumous beheading and quartering. In 1817, amidst high unemployment and poor social conditions, Jeremiah Brandreth led a 100-strong contingent of men in the Pentrich Rising, but along with two of his lieutenants, William Turner and Isaac Ludlam, had his sentence reduced to being hanged until dead and then beheaded. The Prince Regent, George, Prince of Wales, later George IV, insisted that the three have their heads removed with an axe, despite appeals to instead use a knife. The three men were hanged at Derby Gaol for about an hour, before their bodies were removed to a trestle. There a local miner, masked for anonymity, carried out the latter part of the sentence (poorly), but as he held the first head high and made the customary announcement, the crowd reacted with horror and fled. In 1820, amidst more social unrest, five Cato Street Conspiracy participants were hanged and beheaded. This time however, the crowd reacted with anger when the corpses' heads were removed, and the executioners were forced to find safety behind the walls of Newgate Prison. Three men involved in the Chartist Newport Rising of November 1839 were sentenced to be hanged, decapitated and quartered in January 1840, but following a nationwide petition and lobbying of the Home Secretary by the Chief Justice, their sentence was commuted to transportation.
Petty treason was abolished in 1828, but hanging, drawing and quartering was finally rendered obsolete in England by the Forfeiture Act of 1870, which limited the death penalty for treason to hanging alone; although the 1814 Act allowed for the monarch to substitute beheading for hanging.
Overseas
The 1351 treason act also applied to those subjects overseas in British colonies in the Americas. Although some executions for treason were performed in the provinces of Maryland and Virginia, only two people were hanged, drawn and quartered; one in Virginia in 1630, and another in New England. Further sentences were issued in the late 18th century but all were either pardoned or simply hanged.
References
- Footnotes
- Treason before 1351 was defined by Alfred the Great's Doom book. As Patrick Wormald writes, "if anyone plots against the king's life ... , he is liable for his life and all that he owns ... or to clear himself by the king's wergeld."
- Women were considered the legal property of their husbands, and so a woman convicted of killing her husband was guilty not of murder, but petty treason. For disrupting the social order a degree of retribution was therefore required; hanging was considered insufficient for such a heinous crime.
- Some modern sources do not mention the latter part of the sentence, but this is by no means an indicator that it did not still occur.
- Women's heads sometimes adorned the bridge; Elizabeth Barton was a domestic servant at Aldington in Kent who became a nun. After forecasting the early death of Henry VIII, she was drawn to Tyburn on 20 April 1534, and hanged and beheaded.
- Although Harrison was a regicide, no such crime existed in English law and he was therefore charged with high treason.
- A fourteenth, Henry Vane the Younger, was also executed, but for his religious beliefs, his politics, and his lack of contrition.
- Notes
- Milhorn 2004, p. 414
- Diehl & Donnelly 2009, p. 58
- Beadle & Harrison 2008, p. 11
- Beadle & Harrison 2008, p. 12
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- Bibliography
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Further reading
- Andrews, William (1890), Old-Time Punishments, Hull: William Andrews & Co.
- Bellamy, John G. (1979), The Tudor Law of Treason: an Introduction, Taylor & Francis, ISBN 0802022669
- Block, Brian P.; Hostettler, John (1997), Hanging in the balance: a history of the abolition of capital punishment in Britain, Waterside Press, ISBN 1872870473
- Hamburger, Philip (2008), Law and judicial duty, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674031318
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