(Redirected from Hanging, drawing, and quartering)To be 'hanged, drawn and quartered' was the
penalty once ordained in
England for
treason. It is considered by many to be the epitome of
cruel punishment,
[1] and was reserved for treason as this crime was deemed more heinous than
murder and other
capital offences. It was only applied to male criminals. Women found guilty of treason in England were
burnt at the stake, a punishment abolished in
1790.
Seventeenth century print of the execution, by hanging, drawing and quartering, of the members of the
Gunpowder plot.
Details of the punishment
Until 1814, the full punishment for the crime was to be ''hanged, drawn and quartered'' in that the convict would be:
#Dragged on a hurdle (a wooden frame) to the place of execution. (This is one possible meaning of ''drawn.'')
#
Hanged by the neck for a short time or until almost dead. (''hanged'').
#
Disembowelled and
emasculated, and the genitalia and entrails burned before the condemned's eyes (This is another meaning of ''drawn.'' It is often used in cookbooks to denote the disembowelment of chicken or rabbit carcasses before cooking).
[2]
#
Beheaded and the body divided into four parts (''quartered'').
Typically, the resulting five parts (i.e. the four quarters of the body and the head) were
gibbeted (put on public display) in different parts of the city, town, or, in famous cases, country, to deter would-be traitors who hadn't seen the execution. Gibbeting was abolished in England in 1843. After 1814 the convict would be hanged until dead and the mutilation would be performed after death. Drawing and quartering was abolished in 1870.
There is confusion 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
William Wallace ("''detrahatur''" for drawing as a method of transport, and "''devaletur''" for disembowelment), there is no doubt that the subjects of the punishment were disembowelled.
[3]
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 up 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 burnt 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 William Wallace, the other four pieces were sent to different parts of the country.
Judges delivering sentence at the
Old Bailey also seemed to have had some confusion over the term "drawn", and some sentences are summarised 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 concludes as follows:
"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 burnt 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."[4]
History
Edward I, the instigator of hanging, drawing and quartering, as depicted in a statue in
York Minster.
H. Thomas Milhorn claims that hanging, drawing and quartering was first used against
William Maurice, who was convicted of
piracy in
1241.
[5] This would make
Henry III the first practitioner.
The punishment was more famously and verifiably employed by
King Edward I ('Longshanks') in his efforts to bring
Wales,
Scotland, and
Ireland under English rule.
In 1283, it was inflicted on the Welsh prince
Dafydd ap Gruffydd in
Shrewsbury. 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
Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the
Prince of Wales. Llywelyn had won recognition of the title, 'Prince of Wales', from Edward's father
King Henry III, and both Edward and his father had been imprisoned by Llywelyn's ally,
Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester, in 1264.
Edward's enmity towards Llywelyn ran deep. When Dafydd returned to the side of his brother and attacked the English
Hawarden Castle, 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
Bristol Castle and daughters sent to a nunnery in England, whilst having his own son,
Edward II, 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
Tower of London, where the skulls were still visible many years later. His quartered body parts were sent to four English towns for display.
William Wallace
Two decades later,
Sir William Wallace was the next person to be hanged, drawn and quartered, which occurred as a result of Edward I's Scottish wars. 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.
[6] Wallace had a better claim than his Welsh counterpart, having never fought for Edward before fighting against him.
Tudors
In an attempt to intimidate the Roman Catholic clergy to take the
Oath of Supremacy,
Henry VIII ordered that
John Houghton, the prior of the London Charterhouse, be condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered, along with two other
Carthusians. Henry also famously condemned
Francis Dereham to this form of execution for being one of
Catherine Howard's lovers. Dereham and the King's good friend
Thomas Culpeper were both executed shortly before Catherine herself, but Culpeper was spared the cruel punishment and was instead beheaded. Sir
Thomas More, who was found guilty of high treason under the
Treason Act of 1534, was spared this punishment; Henry commuted the execution to one by beheading.
In the aftermath of the
Babington plot to murder
Queen Elizabeth I and replace her on the throne with
Mary Queen of Scots, the conspirators were condemned to this method of execution in September 1586. On hearing of the appalling agony to which the first seven executees 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.
Rodrigo Lopez, a Portuguese Jew who was convicted of conspiring against her in 1594, and the Jesuit
Edmund Campion.
Stuarts
Other notable deaths from the punishment include
Guy Fawkes and his conspirators in the
Gunpowder Plot to assassinate
James I in 1606. Fawkes, though weakened by torture, cheated the executioners. When he was to be hanged until almost dead, he jumped from the gallows, so his neck broke and he died. A co-conspirator, Robert Keyes, had attempted the same trick, but the rope broke, so he was drawn fully conscious.
Henry Garnet was executed on
3 May 1606 at St. Paul's. His crime was to be the
confessor of several members of the Gunpowder Plot. Many spectators thought that his sentence was too severe.
Antonia Fraser writes:
"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".[7]
Under the Commonwealth, while convicted traitors were seemingly spared this gruesome execution,
St John Southworth, 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.
Over six days in October of 1660, after the
Restoration of
Charles II, nine of those convicted of the
regicide of
Charles I in 1649 were executed in
London in this manner. Those executed were:
Thomas Harrison,
John Jones,
Adrian Scroope,
John Carew,
Thomas Scot,
Gregory Clement,
Daniel Axtel,
Hugh Peters, and
John Cooke. Three more regicides suffered the same fate within two years:
John Okey,
John Barkstead and
Miles Corbet. Additionally, the corpses of
John Pym,
Oliver Cromwell,
John Bradshaw and
Henry Ireton were disinterred and hanged, drawn and quartered in
posthumous executions for their involvement in the regicide.
In 1676, Joshua Tefft was executed by this method at Smith's Castle in Wickford, Rhode Island. He was an English colonist who fought on the side of the
Narragansett during the Great Swamp Fight battle of
King Philip's War. He may be the only person ever hanged, drawn and quartered in United States history.
Metacomet, leader of the Narragansett, was himself beheaded and quartered, but not hanged, after his death.
Oliver Plunkett,
Archbishop of Armagh and the Catholic
primate of
Ireland, was arrested in
1681 and transported to
Newgate Prison, London, where he was convicted of treason. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at
Tyburn, the last Catholic to be executed for his faith in England. He was
beatified in 1920 and was
canonized in 1975 by
Pope Paul VI. His head is preserved for viewing as a relic in St. Peter's Church in
Drogheda, while the rest of his body rests in
Downside Abbey, near
Stratton-on-the-Fosse,
Somerset.
If there was 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
penal colonies, or pardoned. The
Bloody Assizes of
Judge Jeffreys after the
Monmouth Rebellion is a notorious post
Civil War English example, but in the aftermath of rebellions in Ireland and Scotland punishment was often just as ruthless.
From the eighteenth century
During the
American War of Independence (1775 – 1783), notable captured
colonists, such as signers of the
American Declaration of Independence, were theoretically subject to being hanged, drawn and quartered as traitors to the King. Those taken in arms (military) were treated as prisoners of war.
The penultimate time the sentence was carried out in England was against the French spy
François Henri de la Motte, who was convicted of treason on
23 July 1781. The last time it was carried out was on
24 August 1782 against Scottish spy
David Tyrie in
Portsmouth 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 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
emasculated, quartered, and his body parts put into a coffin and buried in the pebbles at the seaside. The same account claims that, immediately after his burial, sailors dug the coffin up and cut the body into a thousand pieces, each taking a piece as a
souvenir to their shipmates.
[8] Little else is known of his life.
Edward Marcus Despard and his six accomplices were sentenced to hanging, drawing and quartering for allegedly plotting to assassinate
George III but their sentence was commuted to simple hanging and beheading.
In 1817, the three leaders of the
Pentrich Rising, convicted of high treason, suffered hanging and beheading only.
In 1820,
Arthur Thistlewood and other participants in the
Cato Street Conspiracy 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
William Smith O'Brien in 1848 but commuted to transportation.
In
Lower Canada (now
Quebec ), David McLane was hanged, drawn and quartered on
21 July 1797 for treason. Ignace Vailliancourt was "hanged, dissected and anatomized" on
7 March 1803 for murder.
[9] During the
War of 1812, in May 1814 at Ancaster,
Upper Canada (now
Ontario), Attorney General John Beverley Robinson
[10] 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.
[11]
Details of the crime
Main articles: High treason in the United Kingdom
The crime of ''treason'', or ''offences against the crown'' is often thought of in terms of attempted regicides, such as Guy Fawkes 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.
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 Popes supremacy." In other words, he had come to England and attempted to convert
Protestants to
Catholicism. In a similar vein, John Morgan was also sentenced to this punishment on
30 April 1679, for having received orders from the
See of Rome, and coming to England: there being "very good Evidence that proved he was a Priest, and had said Mass".
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 burnt alive.
Similar, lesser punishments for treason
Men convicted of the lesser crime of
petty treason were dragged to the place of execution and hanged until dead, but not subsequently dismembered. Women convicted of treason or petty treason were
burnt at the stake.
Class distinctions in its application
In Britain, this penalty was usually reserved for commoners, including knights. Noble traitors were 'merely' beheaded, at first by sword and in later years by axe. The different treatment of lords and commoners was clear after the
Cornish Rebellion of 1497: 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.
This class distinction was brought out in a
House of Commons debate of 1680, with regard to the Warrant of Execution of Lord Stafford, which had condemned him to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Sir
William Jones 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."
[12]
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
Henry VIII 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
Anatomy Act in 1832. Respect for the dead is still a sensitive issue in Britain as can be seen by the furor over the "
Alder Hey organs scandal" when the organs of children were kept without parents' informed consent.
[13]
Eyewitness accounts
Sign outside the ''Hung, Drawn and Quartered'' pub in Tower Hill, London
An account is provided by the diary of
Samuel Pepys for Saturday
13 October 1660, in which he describes his attendance at the execution of Major-General
Thomas Harrison for regicide. The complete diary entry for the day, given below, illustrates the matter-of-fact way in which the execution is treated by Pepys:
At 26-27 Great Tower Street,
Tower Hill, London, there is a pub called "The Hung [sic] Drawn and Quartered". On the wall is the quotation from
Samuel Pepys, shown above. The pub is close to the site of several executions, but not to
Charing Cross.
Mentions in fiction
Shakespeare's play ''
Henry V'' features the discovery of the
Southampton 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.
In
Robin Hobb's "realist" fantasy novels ''The Farseer Trilogy'' and ''The Tawny Man Trilogy'', villagers accused of being able to talk to animals are hanged, quartered, and burned.
Charles Dickens' ''
A Tale of Two Cities'' also refers to
Charles Darnay possibly being drawn and quartered as a punishment if he was convicted of treason.
The historical execution of the regicide
Robert-François Damiens, including
quartering using horses, drew prominent late-20th-century attention:
★ In the 1963 play ''
Marat/Sade'', the playwright
Peter Weiss has his imagined version of the
Marquis de Sade describe it with relish.
★ A decade later,
Michel Foucault described and discussed it in the introduction of his ''Surveiller et Punir'' (English edition, ''
Discipline and Punish'').
In
Jimmy Carter's 2003 novel ''The Hornet's Nest.'' rebellious American colonists are arrested by the Crown and tried for and convicted of treason. They are sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, but the sentence is never carried out.
The 2006 mini-series ''
Elizabeth I'' featured graphic scenes depicting the drawing and quartering of conspirators against the Queen.
In Paul Auster's novel, Oracle Night, the narrator says, "I felt I deserved to be be drawn and quartered for my crimes." (p. 183, Picador edition 2003)
French quartering
In
France, the traditional punishment for
regicide (whether attempted or completed) under the
ancien régime (known in
French as ''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 burnt with
sulphur and molten
lead and
wax and
boiling oil poured into the wounds. The quartering would be accomplished by the attachment of the condemned's limbs to horses, who would then tear them away from the body. Finally, the often still-living torso would be burnt. Notable examples include:
★
Jean Châtel, who attempted to assassinate
Henry IV
★
François Ravaillac (1578 –
27 May 1610) was the murderer of King Henri 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.
★
Robert-François Damiens, who attempted the assassination of
Louis XV in
1757 (At least two prominent 20th-century
intellectuals described this execution.)
★
Jacques Clément, the murderer of
Henri III (He was killed in this act of regicide, and
his corpse was subjected to the same "punishment".)
These executions were carried out (along with most others under the ancien régime) in the
Place de Grève.
★
Balthasar Gérard, assassin of
William the Silent, after two days of tenacious
torture.
Gérard's execution took place on the market square in
Delft,
the Netherlands.
See also
Capital punishment in the United Kingdom
Notes
1. In ''Wilkerson v. Utah'' (1878, pertaining to methods of capital punishment), the United States Supreme Court commented that drawing and quartering, public dissecting, burning alive and disemboweling would constitute cruel and unusual punishment while determining that death by firing squad was as legitimate as the common method of that time, hanging
2. Extracts from the transcript of the October 1660 trial and execution of 10 regicides 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.
3. George Neilson, ''Drawing, Hanging and Quartering'' published in ''Notes and Queries'', 15 August 1891; s7-XII: 129 - 131.
4. 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 Proceedings of the Old Bailey
5. H Thomas Milhorn, ''Crime: Computer Viruses to Twin Towers'', Universal Publishers, 2004. ISBN 1-58112-489-9
6. Brown, Chris. ''William Wallace. The True Story of Braveheart''. Stroud: Tempus Publishing Ltd, 2005. ISBN 0-7524-3432-2
7. Antonia Fraser, ''Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot'', Anchor, 1997. ISBN 0-385-47190-4
8. ''Hampshire Chronicle'', Monday, 2 September 1782. Transcript available online: see Some Selected Reports from the Hampshire Chronicle
9. [1]
10. [2]
11. citation needed, web reference has been removed, available in cache 01 June 2007 as http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:725tAA4zbZQJ:www.uppercanadahistory.ca/pp/pp6.html+canada+%22hanged,+drawn+and+quartered%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=ca
12. Anchitell Grey, ''Grey's Debates of the House of Commons: volume 8'', London, 1769
13. Alder Hey organs scandal: the issue explained by David Batty and Jane Perrone Friday April 27, 2001 in The Guardian
External links
★
William Wallace's execution
★
Proceedings of the Old Bailey
★
A comprehensive site about capital punishment in the UK
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