Hanging, drawing and quartering
From Free net encyclopedia
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 in 1790.
Contents |
Details of the punishment
Until 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.
- HangedTemplate:Ref by the neck, but removed before death (hanged).
- Disembowelled, and the genitalia and entrails burned before the victim's eyes; the heart was the last to be removed and was then shown to the victim before the entrails were burned (drawn).Template:Ref
- Beheaded and the body divided into four parts (quartered).
From 1814 the convict was hanged until dead, and the rest of the punishment inflicted posthumously. (See Treason Act 1814.)
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 or town 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 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.Template:Citation needed
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."
History
This gruesome penalty was first used by King Edward I ('Longshanks') in his efforts to bring Scotland and Ireland under English rule. It was first inflicted in 1283 on the Welsh prince Dafydd ap Gruffydd, and on Sir William Wallace two decades later.
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 which the first seven victims were subjected to while being butchered on the scaffold Elizabeth ordered that the remaining conspirators, who were to be despatched on the following day, should be left hanging until they were quite 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. More Catholics were hanged, drawn and quartered in Elizabeth's reign for 'treason' than the number of Protestants who had been burnt at the stake by her predecessor Mary I for heresy.
Other notable victims of the punishment include Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot to assassinate James I in 1606. The Gunpowder Plot conspirator, Robert Keyes, tried to kill himself by jumping when the noose was placed around his neck. Unfortunately for him the rope broke, so he was drawn fully conscious. 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. Henry Garnet was executed on 3rd 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".
During the English Civil War (1639-1651) the first prominent Parliamentarian captured by the Royalists was John Lilburne. Proposals to try him for treason were dropped when the Parliamentary side threatened to retaliate against captured Royalists. Instead Lilburne was freed in an exchange of prisoners.
Over six days in 1660, at the Restoration of Charles II, nine of those convicted of the regicide of Charles I in 1649 were executed in London in this manner. Three more would suffer the same fate within two years. Additionally, the corpses of Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton were disinterred and hanged, drawn and quartered in posthumous executions for their involvement in the regicide.
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 die 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.
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'.
If there was a large rebellion against the Crown, only a few of the ring leaders 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.
During the American war of independence (1775–1783) notable captured colonists such as signers of the Declaration of Independence were subject to being hanged, drawn and quartered as traitors to the King. Those taken in arms (military) would be treated as prisoners of war.
By 1817 the three leaders of the Pentrich Rising, convicted of high treason, suffered hanging and beheading only.
The sentence was last carried out in England against French spy Francis Henry de la Motte, who was convicted of treason on 11th July 1781. 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. Some sources state that the sentence was still used as late as 1867 but this is unconfirmed.
Details of the crime
The crime of treason, or offences against the king (or queen) 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 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 rather than being subjected to this punishment.
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 later 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 Commons debate of 1680 [see Grey's Debates of the House of Commons: volume 8], with regard to the Warrant of Execution of Lord Stafford, which 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."
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, until relatively recently, it was believed that to rise on judgment day the body had to be whole and preferably buried with the feet to the east so that the person would rise facing God. 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 was not manifested in law until the passing of the Anatomy Act in 1832. However, for many of the British population it was not until the 20th century that the link between the body and resurrection was finally broken. Respect for the dead is still a sensitive issue in Britain as can been seen by the furore over the "Alder Hey organs scandal" when the organs of children were kept without parents' informed consentTemplate:Ref.
Eyewitness accounts
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, who was a Fifth Monarchist. The complete diary entry for the day, given below, illustrates the matter-of-fact way in which the execution is treated by Pepys, who seems to handle it with less emotion than he devotes to the untidiness of his wife:
"To my Lord's in the morning, where I met with Captain Cuttance, but my Lord not being up I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn; and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy. It is said, that he said that he was sure to come shortly at the right hand of Christ to judge them that now had judged him; and that his wife do expect his coming again. Thus it was my chance to see the King beheaded at White Hall, and to see the first blood shed in revenge for the blood of the King at Charing Cross. From thence to my Lord's, and took Captain Cuttance and Mr. Sheply to the Sun Tavern, and did give them some oysters. After that I went by water home, where I was angry with my wife for her things lying about, and in my passion kicked the little fine basket, which I bought her in Holland, and broke it, which troubled me after I had done it. Within all the afternoon setting up shelves in my study. At night to bed."
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.
Mention in literature
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.
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.
Michel Foucault's Surveiller et punir (published in English as Discipline and Punish) opens with a detailed account of the punishment of the French regicide Robert-François Damiens, which resembled drawing and quartering.
France
In France, the traditional punishment for regicide or attempted regicide under the ancien régime (known in French as ecartèlement) is often described as "quartering", though it in fact has little to do with the English punishment. The process was as follows: the regicide 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 victim'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 failed to assassinate Henri IV
- François Ravaillac, the killer of Henri IV
- Robert-François Damiens, who failed to assassinate Louis XV in 1757 (the execution is described and discussed in the introduction to Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish).
- Jacques Clément, the murderer of Henri III was actually killed during the regicide. Nevertheless, his corpse was subjected to the punishment described above.
These executions were carried out (along with most others under the ancien régime) in the Place de Grève.
Notes
- Template:Note "Hanging. The use of hanged is preferable to that of hung, when reference is had to death or execution by suspension, and it is also more common." See Webster's 1913 Dictionary
- Template:Note 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.
- Template:NoteAlder Hey organs scandal: the issue explained by David Batty and Jane Perrone Friday April 27, 2001 in The Guardian
External links
fr:Hanged, drawn and quartered nl:vierendelen it:Squartamento no:Hengning, trekking og kvartering ru:Четвертование zh:車裂