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n There is an old tale of a sailor who was shipwreckednand managed to swim through the surf to the shore, scramble over the raggednrocks onto dry land, and then drag himself up a cliff, at the top of which hensaw a gallows. The sailor fell to his knees and thanked God that he had beennlucky enough to land in a Christian country.
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nMan has long applied hisnimagination in devising original methods of disposing of his fellow man. A lawnfrom the time of Æthelstan decreed,
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n“Let him be smitten so that his necknbreak.”n
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nWhen Richard I was departing on crusade for the Holy Land, henordered that if any man were to kill another whilst aboard ship, he was to bentied to the corpse and thrown overboard; if a man killed another on the land,nhe was to be buried alive with the corpse. If a miller was found to have stolennflour above the sum of 4d he was to be hanged from the beam of his mill. InnLondon, a man found guilty of treason was to be bound to a stake in the Thamesnfor two ebbs and two flows of the tide; ‘pirats and robbers by sea’ werenhanged at the low water mark and left ‘till three tides haue ouerwashednthem.’ In fifteenth centurynFordwich, a condemned man was bound hand and foot and thrown by the prosecutorndown the ‘Thieves Well’; at Dover, the criminal was taken to the cliff edgencalled Sharpnesse and infalistationed – that is, thrown over onto the beachnbelow. In 1531, an Act of Parliament was passed allowing for the execution ofnone Richard Rose, a cook in the kitchens of the Bishop of Rochester who hadnintroduced
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n‘…a certeyne venym or poyson into a vessel replenysshed withnyeste or barme stondyng in the Kechyn,’n
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nwhich had resulted in the poisoningnof at least sixteen people. On April 5th 1531, Rose was boiled tondeath at Smithfield; on March 17th in the following year, MargaretnDavy, a maid-servant, was also boiled to death at Smithfield for poisoningnthree households in which she had worked. There are several reports in anvariety of Chronicles that record certain individuals who called themselvesnChrist were crucified for their troubles, for instance,
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n“A man of Oxenfordnfaynyd hym to be Cryst, and was crucified at Addurbury.”n
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nBut of all thenmethods of execution favoured in the past, hanging, drawing and quartering wasnparticularly popular. Regular readers of this blog will recall I have mentionednthis method in numerous posts, but let’s look at it again.
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| Hanging and Quartering |
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nThere is somenconfusion about the terminology of this punishment, which arises from the ordernin which its parts are now given. The correct order should really be drawing,nhanging and quartering, as the condemned man was first drawn – i.e. dragged –nto the place of execution; the chronicler John Capgrave writes in many placesnof men being ‘hangged, drawe and qwartered’, which may be the originalncause of the confusion. There are some who think that the ‘drawing’ refersninstead to the drawing out of the criminal’s entrails but this is not the case.
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| Drawn to the Gallows on a sledge |
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nThere were three types of drawing – the most common was dragging the condemnednto the gallows where he was to be hanged but in some other cases the drawingnwas the actual form of execution, whereby the criminal was dragged behind anhorse until they died from the ordeal (it is well to remember the state ofnroads in the past, and in some instances it is recorded that sharp stones werensometimes placed along the route to worsen its condition). The final, rarer, type of drawing wasnwhen a man was tied to two or more horses and pulled apart. In a dispute betweennthe citizens and Prior of Norwich, thirty-three rioters were sentenced tondeath, some by hanging, some by burning and some specifically by drawing (equisndistracti),
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n“Attached to horses by the feet, they were dragged throughnthe streets of the city till, after great suffering, they ended their lives andnexpired.”n
n[Annales Monastici]n
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| Equis Distracti |
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nThere are many,nmany examples of the first sort of drawing. Sometimes, the man would have hisnarms tied behind his back and would pulled along behind the horse, or would bentied onto a hurdle or gate and dragged along, bouncing and bruising on everynrock and furrow.
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| Dragged to the Gallows on Hurdles |
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nIn the case of Thomas de Turberville, sentenced for treason inn1295, it was ordered that he be drawn on a fresh ox hide, specifically tonprevent him from dying en route to the gallows. In 1238, King Henry IIInordered that a man who had crept into his bedchamber with a knife, in annattempt to murder him, by torn apart by horses, and then beheaded with his bodynbeing cut into three pieces, which were hung on a gibbet, the spectacle to be andeterrent and a warning to others.
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| Drawn behind a Horse |
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nThe sentence of drawing, hanging andnquartering began to take the form that was followed for centuries at about thisntime; the prisoner would be drawn to the gallows, they would be hanged and cutndown whilst still conscious, emasculated, their bowels and entails would be cutnout and shown to them before being burned on a brazier, the prisoner would thennbe beheaded and their body cut into four pieces which would be publiclyndisplayed.
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| Executions on Kennington Common |
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nIn 1746, the year after the second Jacobite rebellion, ninenprisoners were killed in this manner on Kennington Common and in 1820, five menninvolved in the Cato Street Conspiracy were hanged outside Newgate prison andnthen beheaded by a surgeon, although they were not quartered, although thenexecutioners had to take refuge in the prison from an angry crowd, offended bynthe spectacle. This was the last manifestation of this sort of public executionnin England.
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