hanging, drawing and quartering

To be hanged, drawn and quartered became a statutory penalty for men convicted of high treason in the Kingdom of England from 1352 under King Edward III (1327–1377), although similar rituals are recorded during the reign of King Henry III (1216–1272). The convicted traitor was fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn by horse to the place of execution, where he was then hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered (chopped into four pieces). His remains would then often be displayed in prominent places across the country, such as London Bridge, to serve as a warning of the fate of traitors. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burned at the stake.

The same punishment applied to traitors against the King in Ireland from the 15th century onward; William Overy was hanged, drawn and quartered by Lord Lieutenant Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York in 1469, and from the reign of King Henry VII it was made part of statute law. Matthew Lambert was among the most notable Irishmen to suffer this punishment, in 1581 in Wexford.

The severity of the sentence was measured against the seriousness of the crime. As an attack on the monarch's authority, high treason was considered a deplorable act demanding the most extreme form of punishment. Although some convicts had their sentences modified and suffered a less ignominious end, over a period of several hundred years many men found guilty of high treason were subjected to the law's ultimate sanction. They included many Catholic priests executed during the Elizabethan era, and several of the regicides involved in the 1649 execution of Charles I.

Although the Act of Parliament defining high treason remains on the United Kingdom's statute books, during a long period of 19th-century legal reform the sentence of hanging, drawing, and quartering was changed to drawing, hanging until dead, and posthumous beheading and quartering, before being abolished in England in 1870. The death penalty for treason was abolished in 1998.

History

Early punishments for treason

During the High Middle Ages, those in the Kingdom of England found guilty of treason were punished in a variety of ways, often including drawing and hanging. Throughout the 13th century, more severe penalties were recorded, such as disembowelling, burning, beheading, and quartering.

The 13th-century English chronicler Matthew Paris described how in 1238 "a certain man at arms, a man of some education (''armiger literatus'')" attempted to kill King Henry III. His account records in detail how the would-be assassin was executed: "dragged asunder, then beheaded, and his body divided into three parts; each part was then dragged through one of the principal cities of England, and was afterwards hung on a gibbet used for robbers." He was apparently sent by William de Marisco, an outlaw who some years earlier had killed a man under royal protection before fleeing to Lundy Island. De Marisco was captured in 1242 and on Henry's order dragged from Westminster to the Tower of London to be executed. There he was hanged from a gibbet until dead. His corpse was disembowelled, his entrails burned, his body quartered, and the parts distributed to cities across the country.

First recorded examples

The first recorded example of the punishment in its entirety was during Edward I's reign, for the Welsh prince Dafydd ap Gruffydd in 1283 after he turned against the king and proclaimed himself Prince of Wales and Lord of Snowdon. Following the capture of Dafydd ap Gruffydd, Edward proclaimed that the "treacherous lineage" ( House of Aberffraw), and princes of that "turbulent nation" ( Wales) were now his prisoners. Edward summoned a parliament at Shrewsbury to discuss Dafydd's fate. On 30 September, it was decided Dafydd would be executed for what from that time onward would be termed '' high treason''.

On 3 October, Dafydd was drawn through the streets of Shrewsbury to his place of execution, attached to a horse's tail. There he was hanged alive, for killing English noblemen. Dafydd was then revived and disembowelled, eviscerated and made to watch as his entrails burned before him for "sacrilege in committing his crimes in the week of Christ's passion" (Easter). Finally, Dafydd's body was cut into quarters "for plotting the king's death" and the parts were sent to different parts of his realm; the right arm to York, the left to Bristol, the right leg to Northampton and the left leg to Hereford. The head was bound with iron and set on a spear at the Tower of London.

In 1305, the Scottish knight Sir William Wallace, a main leader of the First War of Scottish Independence, was punished in a similar manner. He was forced to wear a crown of laurel leaves and was drawn to Smithfield, where he was hanged and beheaded. His entrails were then burned and his corpse quartered, while his head was set on London Bridge and the quarters sent to Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling, and Perth.

Treason Act 1351

These and other executions, such as those of Andrew Harclay, 1st Earl of Carlisle, and Hugh Despenser the Younger, which each occurred during Edward II's reign, 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 whether that allegiance had been broken. Edward III's justices had offered somewhat overzealous interpretations of what activities constituted treason, "calling felonies treasons and afforcing indictments by talk of accroachment of the royal power", prompting parliamentary demands to clarify the law. Edward therefore introduced the Treason Act 1351. 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 new law offered a narrower definition of treason than had existed before and split the old feudal offence 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, whereas women were burned.

High treason was the most egregious offence an individual could commit. Attempts to undermine the king's authority were viewed with as much seriousness as if the accused had attacked him personally, which itself would be an assault on his status as sovereign and a direct threat to his right to govern. As this might undermine the state, retribution was considered an absolute necessity and the crime deserving of the ultimate punishment. The practical difference between the two offences was therefore 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 burned.

The Act declared that a person had committed high treason if they were:
*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 were 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.

The Act did not limit the king's authority in defining the scope of treason. It contained a proviso giving English judges discretion to extend that scope whenever required, a process more commonly known as constructive treason. It also applied to subjects overseas in British colonies in the Americas, but the only documented incident of an individual there being hanged, drawn, and quartered was that of Joshua Tefft, an English colonist accused of having fought on the side of the Narragansett during the Great Swamp Fight. He was executed in January 1676. Later sentences resulted either in a pardon or a hanging.

Treason Act 1695

Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, was executed on 17 May 1521 for the crime of treason. The wording of his sentence has survived and indicates the precision with which the method of execution was described; he was to be "laid on a hurdle and so drawn to the place of execution, and there to be hanged, cut down alive, your members to be cut off and cast in the fire, your bowels burnt before you, your head smitten off, and your body quartered and divided at the King's will, and God have mercy on your soul."

The original 1351 Act required only one witness to convict a person of treason, although in 1547 this was increased to two. Suspects were first questioned in private by the Privy Council before they were publicly tried. They were allowed no witnesses or defence counsel, and were generally presumed guilty from the outset. This meant that for centuries anyone accused of treason was at a severe legal disadvantage, a situation that lasted until the late 17th century, when several years of politically motivated treason charges made against Whig politicians prompted the introduction of the Treason Act 1695. This allowed a defendant counsel, witnesses, a copy of the indictment, and a jury, and when not charged with an attempt on the monarch's life, to be prosecuted within three years of the alleged offence.

Execution of the sentence

Once sentenced, malefactors were usually held in prison for a few days before being taken to the place of execution. During the High Middle Ages this journey may have been made tied directly to the back of a horse, but it subsequently became customary for the victim to be fastened instead to a wicker hurdle, or wooden panel, itself tied to the horse. Historian Frederic William Maitland thought that this was probably to " ecurefor the hangman a yet living body". The use of the word drawn, as in "to draw", has caused a degree of confusion. 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 this is followed by "in many cases of executions it is uncertain whether this, or o drag (a criminal) at a horse's tail, or on a hurdle or the like, to the place of execution; formerly a legal punishment of high treason is meant. The presumption is that where ''drawn'' is mentioned after ''hanged'', the sense is as here." Historian Ram Sharan Sharma arrived at the same conclusion: "Where, as in the popular ''hung, drawn and quartered'' se(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." Sharma is not the only historian to support this viewpoint as the phrase, "hanged until dead before being drawn and quartered", occurs in a number of relevant secondary publications. 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.

Some reports indicate that during Queen Mary I's reign bystanders were vocal in their support: while in transit, convicts sometimes suffered directly at the hands of the crowd. William Wallace was whipped, attacked and had rotten food and waste thrown at him, and the priest Thomas Pilchard was reportedly barely alive by the time he reached the gallows in 1587. Others found themselves admonished by "zealous and godly men"; it became customary for a preacher to follow the condemned, asking them to repent. According to Samuel Clarke, the Puritan clergyman William Perkins (1558–1602) once managed to convince a young man at the gallows that he had been forgiven, enabling the youth to go 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."

After the king's commission had been read aloud, the crowd was normally asked to move back from the scaffold before being addressed by the convict. While these speeches were mostly an admission of guilt (although few admitted treason), still they were carefully monitored by the sheriff and chaplain, who were occasionally forced to act; in 1588, Catholic priest William Dean's address to the crowd was considered so inappropriate that he was gagged almost to the point of suffocation. Questions on matters of allegiance and politics were sometimes put to the prisoner, as happened to Edmund Gennings in 1591. He was asked by priest hunter Richard Topcliffe to "confess his treason", but when Gennings responded "if to say Mass be treason, I confess to have done it and glory in it", Topcliffe ordered him to be quiet and instructed the hangman to push him off the ladder. Sometimes the witness responsible for the condemned man's execution was also present. A government spy, John Munday, was in 1582 present for the execution of Thomas Ford. Munday supported the sheriff, who had reminded the priest of his confession when he protested his innocence. The sentiments expressed in such speeches may be related to the conditions encountered during imprisonment. Many Jesuit priests suffered badly at the hands of their captors but were frequently the most defiant; conversely, those of a higher station were often the most apologetic. Such contrition may have arisen from the sheer terror felt by those who thought they might be disembowelled rather than simply beheaded as they would normally expect, and any apparent acceptance of their fate may have stemmed from the belief that a serious, but not treasonable act, had been committed. Good behaviour at the gallows may also have been due to a convict's desire for his heirs not to be disinherited.

The condemned were occasionally forced to watch as other traitors, sometimes their confederates, were executed before them. The priest James Bell was in 1584 made to watch as his companion, John Finch, was "a-quarter-inge." Edward James and Francis Edwardes were made to witness Ralph Crockett's execution in 1588, in an effort to elicit their co-operation and acceptance of Elizabeth I's religious supremacy before they were themselves executed. Normally stripped to the shirt with their arms bound in front of them, prisoners were then hanged for a short period, either from a ladder or cart. On the sheriff's orders the cart would be taken away (or if a ladder, turned), leaving the man suspended in mid-air. The aim was usually to cause strangulation and near-death, although some victims were killed prematurely, the priest John Payne's death in 1582 being hastened by a group of men pulling on his legs. Conversely, some, such as the deeply unpopular William Hacket (d. 1591), were cut down instantly and taken to be disembowelled and normally emasculated—the latter, according to Sir Edward Coke, to "show his issue was disinherited with corruption of blood."

A victim still conscious at that point might have seen his entrails burned, before his heart was removed and the body decapitated and quartered (chopped into four pieces). The regicide Major-General Thomas Harrison, after being hanged for several minutes and then cut open in October 1660, was reported to have leaned across and hit his executioner—resulting in the swift removal of his head. His entrails were thrown onto a nearby fire. John Houghton was reported to have prayed while being disembowelled in 1535, and in his final moments to have cried "Good Jesu, what will you do with my heart?" Executioners were often inexperienced and proceedings did not always run smoothly. In 1584, Richard White's executioner removed his bowels piece by piece, through a small hole in his belly, "the which device taking no good success, he mangled his breast with a butcher's axe to the very chine most pitifully." At his execution in January 1606 for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot, Guy Fawkes managed to break his neck by jumping from the gallows.

No records exist to demonstrate exactly how the corpse was quartered, although an engraving of the quartering of Sir Thomas Armstrong in 1684 shows the executioner making vertical cuts through the spine and removing the legs at the hip. The distribution of Dafydd ap Gruffydd's remains was described by Herbert Maxwell: "the right arm with a ring on the finger in York; the left arm in Bristol; the right leg and hip at Northampton; the left egat Hereford. But the villain's head was bound with iron, lest it should fall to pieces from putrefaction, and set conspicuously upon a long spear-shaft for the mockery of London." After the execution in 1660 of several of the regicides involved in the death of King Charles I eleven years earlier, the diarist John Evelyn remarked: "I saw not their execution, but met their quarters, mangled, and cut, and reeking, as they were brought from the gallows in baskets on the hurdle." Such remains were typically parboiled and displayed as a gruesome reminder of the penalty for high treason, usually wherever the traitor had conspired or found support. Salt and cumin