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Revision as of 14:03, 31 July 2004 by 217.44.113.24 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Drawing and quartering was part of the penalty anciently ordained in England for treason. It is considered by many to be the epitome of "cruel and unusual" punishment and was reserved for traitors because treason was deemed more heinous than murder and other capital crimes.
Until 1870, the full punishment for the crime was that the culprit be:
- Hanged by the neck but not until he was dead
- Disembowelled and his entrails burned before his eyes. The act of disembwelment is know as drawing.
- Beheaded and his body divided into four parts (quartered).
Typically, the resulting five parts (i.e., the four quarters of the body and the head) were gibbetted (put on public display) in different parts of the city or town to deter would-be traitors. Gibbeting was abolished in England in 1843.
Women were generally burned at the stake rather than being subjected to this punishment. There is confusion among modern historians about whether "drawing" referred to the dragging to the place of execution or the disembowelling.
This gruesome penalty was first used by King Edward I ('Longshanks') in his efforts to bring all of Great Britain under English rule. It was first inflicted in 1284 on the Welsh prince Dafyd ap Gruffydd, and on Sir William Wallace a few years later. The two don't fit the typical description of a traitor; both were born free from English rule, never recognized Edward's conquests, and spent their lives fighting against it. "Patriots" or "rebels" would probably be a more apt description.
Shakespeare's play Henry V features the discovery of a French plot to kill King Henry V before he sailed to France. Two of the conspirators (Henry, Lord Scroop of Masham, and Richard, Earl of Cambridge) were nobles and were beheaded; Thomas Grey, Knight of Northumberland, was drawn and quartered.
Other notable victims of the punishment include Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot as well as Edward Marcus Despard and his six accomplices who were hanged, drawn and quartered in 1803 for conspiring to assassinate George III. The sentence was last carried out in 1820 (though it was passed as late as 1867).
In Britain, this penalty was usually reserved for commoners, including knights; noble traitors were "merely" beheaded, at first by sword and later by axe. The different treatment of lords and commoners was clear after the 1497 Cornish uprising: lowly-born Michael An Gof and Thomas Flamank were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, while their fellow rebellion leader Lord Audley was beheaded at Tower Hill.
During the American Revolution, most captured colonists were treated as prisoners of war, rather than as traitors, and thus were spared this punishment.