Statue of King Edward I in York Minster
WHEN THE HANGED, DREW AND QUARTERED .......
The English reserved their most horrific punishment for treason
It can be a subject of no novelty to regular readers of this organ that the State of Bangladesh retains and uses the death penalty by means of hanging.
In fact the death penalty is used frequently over there and within the last few years, since I have been involved with this newspaper, quite a few men have suffered at the end of the hangman’s rope.
The United Kingdom no longer has a death penalty and when it was abolished in the 60s few had died from it in the decades previously. Whenever someone was hanged there was inevitably a crowd of abolitionists outside the prison gates protesting against the barbarity.
Of course, although the official death penalty is no longer there that does no stop clandestine state agencies from getting rid of, by killing, individuals whose existence is not required - unofficially.
Going back in time, however, one enters periods of history when things were more explicit than today and it was the custom to publicly disgrace persons who had caused major upsets to the authorities.
These days the explicit public humiliation of a misbehaving member of society is the exception not the norm, apart from the giving of criminal records in open court. The use of black lists and bars to various amenities and avenues of advancement is the norm today.
In the part of the world whence we originate, for example, in centuries past, one of the standard punishments for treason was to be trampled to death by an elephant. No doubt the sheer weight of the elephant represented the power and potency of the outraged state, or the outraged maharajah or nabob or prince or whoever or whatever.
In the United Kingdom, however, death by elephant has never been a standard method of judicial execution.
It was several years ago that I saw the motion picture Braveheart starring Mel Gibson as Sir William Wallace at the Leicester Square Odeon with a dramatised depiction of his execution for treason by hanging, drawing and quartering and it is with this that my present labour is concerned.
With the method of execution, not Mel Gibson, I mean.
Of all the possible forms of crime, one stands above the others in seriousness. Above piracy on the high seas and above murders, sexual offences and religious offences. In nearly all countries in the world that crime is treason.
The execution of Jesus by crucifixion was, technically, for the crime of treason against the majesty of the Roman state for he had called himself “The King of the Jews” and, indeed, there seems to have been a notice to that effect at the execution place in Golgotha.
In England, as in most other nations, the most horrific method of punishment was devised for treason. Here it was hanging drawing and quartering.
So, 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” and was reserved for the crime of treason, which was deemed more heinous than murder and other capital crimes. It was only applied to male criminals. Women found guilty of treason in England were burnt at the stake, a punishment which was abolished in1790.
WHEN THE HANGED, DREW AND QUARTERED .......
The English reserved their most horrific punishment for treason
It can be a subject of no novelty to regular readers of this organ that the State of Bangladesh retains and uses the death penalty by means of hanging.
In fact the death penalty is used frequently over there and within the last few years, since I have been involved with this newspaper, quite a few men have suffered at the end of the hangman’s rope.
The United Kingdom no longer has a death penalty and when it was abolished in the 60s few had died from it in the decades previously. Whenever someone was hanged there was inevitably a crowd of abolitionists outside the prison gates protesting against the barbarity.
Of course, although the official death penalty is no longer there that does no stop clandestine state agencies from getting rid of, by killing, individuals whose existence is not required - unofficially.
Going back in time, however, one enters periods of history when things were more explicit than today and it was the custom to publicly disgrace persons who had caused major upsets to the authorities.
These days the explicit public humiliation of a misbehaving member of society is the exception not the norm, apart from the giving of criminal records in open court. The use of black lists and bars to various amenities and avenues of advancement is the norm today.
In the part of the world whence we originate, for example, in centuries past, one of the standard punishments for treason was to be trampled to death by an elephant. No doubt the sheer weight of the elephant represented the power and potency of the outraged state, or the outraged maharajah or nabob or prince or whoever or whatever.
In the United Kingdom, however, death by elephant has never been a standard method of judicial execution.
It was several years ago that I saw the motion picture Braveheart starring Mel Gibson as Sir William Wallace at the Leicester Square Odeon with a dramatised depiction of his execution for treason by hanging, drawing and quartering and it is with this that my present labour is concerned.
With the method of execution, not Mel Gibson, I mean.
Of all the possible forms of crime, one stands above the others in seriousness. Above piracy on the high seas and above murders, sexual offences and religious offences. In nearly all countries in the world that crime is treason.
The execution of Jesus by crucifixion was, technically, for the crime of treason against the majesty of the Roman state for he had called himself “The King of the Jews” and, indeed, there seems to have been a notice to that effect at the execution place in Golgotha.
In England, as in most other nations, the most horrific method of punishment was devised for treason. Here it was hanging drawing and quartering.
So, 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” and was reserved for the crime of treason, which was deemed more heinous than murder and other capital crimes. It was only applied to male criminals. Women found guilty of treason in England were burnt at the stake, a punishment which was abolished in1790.
Until as late as 1870, 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. (drawn)
· Hanged by the neck, but removed before death (hanged).
· Disembowelled and the genitalia and entrails burned before the victim's eyes (often mistaken for drawing).
· 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, the town, or, in famous cases, the country, to deter would-be traitors. Gibbeting was abolished in England in 1843.
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 Sir William Wallace ("detrahatur" for drawing as a method of transport, and "devaletur" for disembowelment), there is no doubt that the victims of this extraordinarily cruel form of punishment were in fact disembowelled.
Judges delivering sentence at the Central Criminal Court (“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."
It is claimed that this penalty was first used against William Maurice, who was convicted of piracy in 1241. However it was more famously and verifiably employed by King Edward I (“Longshanks” and also depicted in Braveheart) in his efforts to bring Wales, Scotland and Ireland under English rule.
It was inflicted in 1283 on the Welsh prince Dafyd ap Gruffydd in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. Prince 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 I and his father had been imprisoned by Llywelyn's ally, Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester in 1264.
Thus King Edward's enmity towards Llywelyn ran deep. When Prince Dafydd returned to the side of his brother and attacked the English Hawarden Castle, King Edward saw this as both a personal betrayal and a military setback and hence his punishment of Prince Dafydd was specifically designed to be harsher than any previous form of capital punishment.
The punishment was part of an overall strategy to eliminate Welsh independence. King Edward built an “iron ring” of castles in Wales and had Prince Dafydd's young sons incarcerated for life in Bristol Castle and his daughters sent to a convent in England, whilst having his own son, the future King Edward II assume the title “Prince of Wales.”
Prince 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.
Two decades later Sir William Wallace was the next to suffer the fate, as a consequence of Edward I's Scottish wars. The precedent had been set and the punishment became the ultimate penalty for treason against the English crown. However it can be argued (and indeed was by both Prince Dafydd and Sir William at their trials) that they were not “traitors” as they had fought in defence of Wales and Scotland and were not subjects of the English king in the first place.
The penultimate time the sentence was carried out in England was against the French spy Francis Henry de la Motte, who was convicted of treason on 23 July 1781. The last time it was actually carried out was on Saturday 24 August 1782 against the 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.
Michael Wallace of Inverness, speaking of his namesake’s death said: “I think the people who do this should have the same thing done to them. Those who humiliate others should be humiliated themselves.”
Finally, from the Francis Henry De la Motte, treason trial of, 11th July, 1781 in the Old Bailey, the judge passing sentence said: “…. the State requires that you should be made an example of, to deter others from meriting that fate which awaits you. The sentence of the Law in your case is, and this Court doth adjudge, that you be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution; that you be there hanged by the neck, but not until you are dead; but that, being alive, you be cut down, and your bowels taken out and burnt before your face; that your head be severed from your body, and your body divided into four parts; and that your head and quarters be disposed of as the King shall think fit: and may the Lord have mercy on your soul!”
It makes me think that our death by elephant was mild in comparison!
THE END
This article was published in the 23rd November 2006 issue of the Bangla Mirror, the first English language weekly for the United Kingdom's Bangladeshis - read everywhere from the Arctic Circle to the sub-Antarctic.
