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To be hanged, drawn and quartered was from 1351 the penalty in England for high treason. The sentence was first used during the reign of King Henry III, but was more frequently used under his successor, Edward I. Those men convicted were first drawn to the place of execution, usually on a wooden hurdle. Once there, they were ritually hanged, emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded and quartered (chopped into four pieces). The remains were often prominently displayed around the country, often on London Bridge, as a warning against dissent. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burnt at the stake.

Although some convicts had their sentences commuted and suffered a less ignominious end than being hanged, drawn and quartered, over a period of almost 600 years a wide variety of traitors were not so lucky. The Scottish knight William Wallace received the sentence in full at Smithfield in London. Over a hundred English Catholic priests were similarly executed at Tyburn. Plotters engaged in conspiracies against the Crown, such as the Gunpowder Plotters, were also killed, as were some of the regicides involved in sentencing Charles I to death. During the Bloody Assizes several hundred rebels were dispatched in less than a month.

Although the 1351 act that defined high treason remains on the statue books, hanging, drawing and quartering was downgraded to drawing, hanging until dead, and posthumous beheading and quartering. It was finally abolished in England in 1870.

Treason in England

The first recorded instance of a person being hanged, drawn and quartered in England was that of William Maurice, who in 1241, during Henry III's reign, was convicted of piracy. The punishment is more frequently recorded during Edward I's reign. Dafydd ap Gruffydd was the first nobleman in England to receive the sentence. He had previously fought alongside Edward, but in 1282 he turned against the king, and on the death of his brother proclaimed himself Prince of Wales and Lord of Snowdon. He was captured, tried and executed in 1283; his quarters were distributed across the country, while his head was placed on top of the Tower of London. The Scottish knight William Wallace suffered a similar fate. Captured and tried in 1305, he was strapped to a hurdle and dragged by horse through the streets of London, to the scaffold at Smithfield. Along the way he was whipped and hit by the spectators, who also threw rotten food and waste at him. After being hanged, and while still alive, he was emasculated, eviscerated, beheaded, and then quartered. His preserved head (dipped in pitch) was placed on a spike on London Bridge (the first to appear there), while his arms and legs were displayed at various towns across England and Scotland.

These and other executions (such as those of Andrew Harclay, 1st Earl of Carlisle and Hugh Despenser the Younger) 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 if that allegiance had been broken. The Treason Act of 1351, passed in the 25th year of Edward III's reign and still in force today, was an attempt to resolve this ambiguity. 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 the sovereign. The act split the old feudal offence of treason 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, while women were burnt alive.

High treason was the most egregious offence an individual could commit, seen as a direct threat to the king's right to govern. Attempts to undermine his authority were viewed with as much seriousness as if the accused had made a direct assault on his body, which itself would be an attack on his status as sovereign. As such an attack could potentially undermine the state, retribution was considered an absolute necessity, and demanded the ultimate punishment. The practical difference between the two offences therefore was 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 (her anatomy being considered inappropriate for the sentence), women were instead drawn and burnt.

The act declared that a person was committing high treason if engaged in one of the seven following offences:

1. compassing or imagining the death of the king, his wife or his eldest son and heir,
2. violating the king's wife, his eldest daughter if she was unmarried, or the wife of his eldest son and heir,
3. levying war against the king in his realm,
4. adhering to the King's enemies in his realm, giving them aid and comfort in his realm or elsewhere;
5. counterfeiting the Great Seal or the Privy Seal, or the king's coinage,
6. knowingly importing counterfeit money,
7. killing the Chancellor, Treasurer or one of the king's Justices while performing their offices.

However, it contains the proviso:

And because many other cases of like treason, may happen in time to come, which a man cannot think or declare at this present time; It is accorded, that if any other case, supposed treason, which is not above specified, doth happen anew before any justices, the justices shall tarry without going to judgement of treason, till the case be showed before the king and his parliament, and it be declared whether it ought to be judged treason or other felony.

Therefore it did not fully constrain the monarch's authority to define the scope of treason, and gave English judges discretion to extend it whenever required—otherwise known as constructive treason.

The sentence

After being sentenced, malefactors were usually held in prison for a few days before being drawn by horse to the place of execution, usually on a hurdle (similar to a piece of wooden fencing), their hands tied. Dragging was a form of transport usually reserved for carcasses and other low-value goods. They were then stripped of their clothing—and thus their social status–and taken to the scaffold, where they were hanged for a short period, but only to cause strangulation and near-death (death was not clearly understood; it was thought that degrees of death existed, and that a person could, perhaps, be killed more than once). They were then disembowelled (and sometimes emasculated). Those still concious at this point might have seen their entrails burned, before their heart was removed, and then their head—the latter signalling an unquestionable death. Finally, the corpse was quartered (chopped into four pieces), each piece later being displayed as a warning to others.

As happened with Wallace, the heads of the executed were often displayed on London Bridge, for centuries the route by which many travellers from the south entered the city. On occasion accompanied by the parboiled quarters of executed men, such gruesome trophies served as a more permanent reminder of the penalty for treason. Several eminent commentators remarked on the visage; in 1566 Joseph Justus Scaliger wrote that "in London there were many heads on the bridge... I have seen there, as if they were masts of ships, and at the top of them, quarters of men's corpses", and in 1602 the Duke of Stettin emphasised the ominous nature of their presence when he wrote "near the end of the bridge, on the suburb side, were stuck up the heads of thirty gentlemen of high standing who had been beheaded on account of treason and secret practices against the Queen".

Some confusion exists over the meaning of the word drawn, in the context outlined above. 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 is followed by the postscript "in many cases of executions it is uncertain whether this, or sense 4 , is meant. The presumption is that where drawn is mentioned after hanged, the sense is as here." Author S. R. Sharma arrives at the same conclusion: "where, as in the popular hung, drawn and quartered (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". However, the historian and author Ian Mortimer disagrees. In an essay published on his website, he writes that evisceration did not always take place, and therefore that 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.

Before they were hanged, prisoners sometimes gave a public speech, expressing their remorse and asking for forgiveness. This was a form of ritual cleansing, illustrated by one example where a young man already on the ladder, refusing to believe that he had been forgiven by God, was called back down by the Puritan clergyman William Perkins. The clergyman managed to convince him that he had been forgiven, and the youth reportedly went 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".

The sentence of hanging, drawing, and quartering punished the guilty traitor via his body. Although gruesome and cruel by today’s standards, the practice was a logical legal mechanism that reflected complex conceptual understandings of the time. It magnified and inverted the crime perpetrated on the integrity of the king by mutilating and completely destroying the physical body of the traitor. Various steps involved in the penalty worked to stamp the authority of the monarch on the criminal and to purge the threat by marking the dishonour of the condemned. Central to this punishment was the understanding that the physical body and individual were inextricably intertwined even immediately after death. Therefore, it followed that the penalty should operate by targeting the body.

According to history student Maeve Jones's essay on high treason, each step of the procedure marked a rite of passage and the "progressive robbing of honour from the offender", but certainly several purposes were served by the criminal's mutilation. In the case of Hugh Despenser the Younger, his hanging was punishment for theft: "that you are found as a thief, and therefore shall be hanged". For being a traitor, he was drawn and quartered, and for being an outlaw he was beheaded. For coming between the king and queen he was disembowelled, and his organs burnt. In the opinion of Professor Robert Kastenbaum, Hugh's mutilation (presuming that his disembowelment was post-mortem) was a reminder to the crowd that dissent was not tolerated. The corpse became so unrecognisable to them that any compassion was unlikely, and even in the afterlife, God might no longer want Hugh—a view which lingered for centuries, exemplified by the controversy surrounding the dissection of corpses for anatomy. Quartering the corpse might also remove any prospect of funereal support, as relatives had to wait until the spiked remains had decomposed before they were able to bury them. Since relatives were normally responsible for taking care of a recently-departed family member, denying them a funeral in this way spread the traitor's shame onto the family. Kastenbaum also suggests that burning the viscera might also have been to expel any evil spirits contained within. Jones writes that the evisceration of an offender while concious did not just mark his public disgrace, but through the actions of the executioner also highlighted his submission to legitimate authority, and that the burning of his organs was a supplementary form of torture, and a method of prolonging his agony.

Use in England

This section provides several notable examples of when the sentence was used, and in what context. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of those people hanged, drawn and quartered.

Plantagents

Also introduced in 1351 was the Statute of Labourers. This, and other social grievances including the Black Death, were instrumental in prompting the 1381 Peasants' Revolt. Its leader, Wat Tyler, was killed in June 1381 at Smithfield, during a meeting with the young King Richard II. The Lollard priest John Ball, also involved in the uprising, immediately fled, but was captured less than a month later. He was hanged, drawn and quartered on 15 July. Richard had succeeded to the throne while still a child, and in the ensuing power struggles between his advisers Thomas Usk was one of those who fell foul of court politics, when he was accused of misleading the young king, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered in 1388.

Richard was deposed by Henry IV. Owain Glyndŵr, a welshman who was loyal to Richard, became the leader of the Glyndŵr Rising. He subsequently defeated Henry's army at Hyddgen. Henry responded by bringing up from Worcester a large army to capture Owain. Llywelyn ap Gruffydd Fychan was pressured into his service, but as a loyal patriot, and with two sons in Owain's army, he led the king in the wrong direction, allowing Owain the opportunity to escape. When in 1401 he admitted to the king what he had done, Henry had Llywelyn disembowelled and dismembered at Llandovery Castle.

At the start of Edward IV's reign in 1461, John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester, was appointed to the king's council. He became constable of the Tower of London, and the following year was made Constable of England, with authority to try all cases of treason. He was responsible for many executions, including the hanging, drawing and quartering of 20 of the earl of Warwick's men. These latter executions provoked strong public condemnation, and when Edward fled the country to be replaced by Henry VI, Tiptoft was arraigned and condemned for high treason. He was beheaded on Tower Hill, in October 1470.

Tudor England

Between 1533 and 1540, Henry VIII took control of the English Church from Rome, the start of years of religious tension in England. The Carthusian priest John Houghton became the first man in England to refuse to swear the Oath of Supremacy, and with four colleagues was dragged to Tyburn to be executed in 1535. Houghton said on the scaffold: "Our holy mother the Church has decreed otherwise than the king and parliament have decreed. I am therefore bound in conscience and am ready and willing to suffer every kind of torture rather than deny a doctrine of the Church". The execution is recorded in the Catholic archives:

Then he cut open his belly, dragged out his bowels, his heart and all else, and threw them into a fire, during which our blessed Father not only did not cry out on account of the intolerable pain, but on the contrary during all this time until his heart was torn out, prayed continually, to the wonder not only of the presiding officer but of all the people who witnessed it. Being at his last gasp, and nearly disembowelled, he said to his tormentor while in the act of tearing out his heart, "Good Jesu, what will you do with my heart?" and saying this, he expired. And lastly his head was cut off and the beheaded body was divided into four parts, the remains thrown into cauldrons and parboiled, and put up at different places in the city. And one arm of our Father was suspended over the gate of our Carthusians' house.

Henry's daughter, Mary I, returned England to Catholicism, but her marriage in 1554 to Philip II of Spain prompted Thomas Wyatt the younger to rebel against the union. The rising failed, and he was charged and found guilty of high treason, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. This was commuted to beheading and his head was exhibited on a gallows near Berkeley Square, while his quarters were displayed at various places across the city. As many as 400 rebels may have been killed for their involvement in the uprising. Also caught in the aftermath was William Thomas, a Welsh scholar accused by some of the rebels of planning to murder the queen. He was hanged, drawn and quartered in May that year. His head was placed on London Bridge, and the rest of his body at Cripplegate.

Mary was succeeded to the throne by her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth I. English Catholics struggled in a society dominated by the newly separate and increasingly Protestant Church of England. Elizabeth responded to the growing religious and political divide by increasing the severity of anti-Catholic legislation, with stiff penalties exacted on those who refused to comply. Priests such as Cuthbert Mayne and Edmund Campion, two of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, fell foul of these laws and were hanged, drawn and quartered. Other Tudor conspiracies, such as the Babington plot, resulted in further executions. Not all had their roots in religious conflict, however. Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper were executed in November 1541, after it was discovered that they each had carnal knowledge of Henry's wife, Katherine Howard. Culpeper was drawn on a hurdle to Tyburn and beheaded there, in itself unusual since most beheadings were carried out at Tower Hill. There was nothing to distinguish Dereham's punishment however, as he was hanged, drawn and quartered in the same place. Katherine was deprived of her queenship, and was beheaded in February the following year.

The Stuart era and English Interregnum

For their part in the Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy to kill Elizabeth's successor James I and replace him with a Catholic monarch, from 30–31 January 1605 the surviving eight Catholic conspirators were hanged, drawn and quartered. The most notorious, Guy Fawkes, managed to cheat the executioner by jumping from the scaffold while his head was in the noose, breaking his neck. His lifeless body was nevertheless drawn and quartered, and his body parts distributed to "the four corners of the kingdom".

Use of the sentence continued through the English Interregnum. John Southworth was the only Catholic priest executed during the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, and the last person executed simply for being a priest in England. Arrested on 19 June 1654, he was tried before the common serjeant, and not the high court of justice (which had sole jurisdiction over treasons), meaning that he was probably executed under an earlier conviction. He refused to deny that he was a priest, an option which might have saved his life. Foreign ambassadors pleaded on his behalf, but unlike the kings and queens before him Cromwell had no authority to pardon the priest, who was ordered to be hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 28 June. Instead Cromwell ordered that surgeons be present at his execution, to sew the corpse back together so that it could be sent to Douai College for burial. Exhumed when the college was demolished, it is the only corpse of an English Catholic martyr to have survived into modern times.

With the restoration to the throne of Charles II, Major-General Thomas Harrison, a Fifth Monarchist and regicide who helped sentence Charles's father Charles I to death, was himself executed for high treason. His sentence, passed at the Old Bailey, was pronounced:

That you be led to the place from whence you came, and from thence be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution, and then you shall be hanged by the neck and, being alive, shall be cut down, and your privy members to be cut off, and your entrails be taken out of your body and, you living, the same to be burnt before your eyes, and your head to be cut off, your body to be divided into four quarters, and head and quarters to be disposed of at the pleasure of the King's majesty. And the Lord have mercy on your soul.

Therefore at Charing Cross two days later, and watched by a crowd of spectators which included the new king, Harrison was hanged for several minutes, and half-choking, was cut open. At this point he reportedly leaned across and hit the executioner, resulting in the swift removal of his own head. His entrails were thrown onto a nearby fire, while three days later his head adorned the sled which drew fellow regicide John Cooke to his execution. It was later displayed in Westminster Hall; his quarters were fastened to the city gates. In all, 13 men were hanged, drawn and quartered for their involvement in Charles's execution. Several years later about 100 men (including some former parliamentarian soldiers) launched a failed insurrection against the new regime. In what became known as the Farnley Wood Plot, the rebels were arrested and tried, and 26 of them condemned to death. Of those, 16 were hanged, drawn and quartered at York in a single morning, providing, in the words of historian Andrew Hopper, "a spectacle on a scale unseen in the city for nearly a century."

The Glorious Revolution

Following the failed Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, when rebels attempted to overthrow Charles's successor, James II, almost 1,400 of them were charged with treason, and tried during what became known as the Bloody Assizes. In less than a month, more than 200 rebels were hanged, drawn and quartered. Their remains were parboiled, tarred, and displayed on poles, trees and lampposts. Only when James conducted a progress through the area were they removed and buried.

William Staley was a victim of the fictitious Popish Plot, and was hanged, drawn and quartered on 26 November 1678. His quarters were given to his relatives, but incensed by a funeral given several days later, the coroner ordered the body to be dug up and set upon the city gates. Staley's was the last head to adorn London Bridge. Another victim of the plot, Archbishop of Armagh Oliver Plunket, was arrested on 6 December 1679. He was arraigned at Dundalk in July the following year, but following problems at the trial he was moved to London in October, and arraigned at Westminster Hall on 3 May 1681. Eventually tried on 8 June, amidst public hysteria over the alleged plot, he was found guilty, and hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 1 July 1681. Plunkett was the last of 105 Catholic martyrs executed there between 1531 and 1681.

Not all who received the sentence were executed; in 1694 Thomas Walcott was lucky enough to escape death, when Lord Chief Justice John Holt pointed out that his judgement omitted the phrase iposque vivente comburentur. The court agreed that judges had no discretion to alter the law, and set the judgement aside.

James was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, abdicating during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Following the failed Jacobite Rising of 1745, in which Charles Edward Stuart attempted to regain the throne for the House of Stuart, several Jacobite officers were captured, and later hanged, drawn and quartered. By then, however, it was up to the discretion of the executioner as to how much those being executed should suffer, and thus the rebels were killed after being hanged—before their evisceration. Archibald Cameron was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1753, long after his part in the Jacobite uprising on 1745. The French spy François Henri de la Motte was executed in 1781, but was hanged for almost an hour before his heart was cut out and burnt. David Tyrie was less fortunate, his sentence for passing confidential information to the French resulting in him being hanged, decapitated and quartered, at Portsmouth in 1782. Some in the 20,000-strong crowd fought over his corpse, taking with them such gruesome trophies as his limbs and fingers. The Catholic priest and Irish nationalist James Coigly was convicted of high treason in 1798, but was hanged only. The sentence continued in use into the 19th century. Edward Despard was arrested in 1802, apparently planning a coup d'état, and with six co-conspirators was drawn, hanged and beheaded in front of an audience of about 20,000, at Horsemonger Lane Gaol in February 1803.

Later history

The last woman sentenced to be burnt was Catherine Murphy, in 1789. Although she was first hanged to death, her sentence was oppugned in the House of Commons by Sir Benjamin Hammett, who called it one of "the savage remains of Norman policy". As a result, parliament introduced the Treason Act of 1790, which, for women guilty of treason, substituted burning with hanging. The Treason Act of 1814 changed the sentence for high treason to drawing, hanging until dead, and posthumous beheading and quartering. In 1817, amidst high unemployment and poor social conditions, Jeremiah Brandreth led a 100-strong contingent of men in the Pentrich Rising, but along with two of his lieutenants, William Turner and Isaac Ludlam, had his sentence reduced to being hanged until dead and then beheaded. The then Prince regent, George IV insisted that the three should have their heads removed with an axe, despite appeals to instead use a knife. The three men were hanged at Derby Gaol for about an hour, before their bodies were removed to a trestle. There a local miner, masked for anonymity, carried out the latter part of the sentence (poorly), but as he held the first head high and made the customary announcement, the crowd reacted with horror and fled. In 1820, amidst more social unrest, five Cato Street conspirators were hanged and beheaded. This time however, the crowd reacted with anger when the corpses' heads were removed, and the executioners were forced to find safety behind the walls of Newgate Prison.

Petty treason was abolished in 1828. Hanging, drawing and quartering was finally rendered obsolete in England by the Forfeiture Act of 1870, which limited the death penalty for treason to hanging alone, although the 1814 Act allowed for the monarch to substitute beheading for hanging.

Other countries

The 1351 treason act applied to all British subjects, including those overseas in the Thirteen Colonies. Although some executions for treason were performed in the provinces of Maryland and Virginia, only two people were hanged, drawn and quartered; one in Virginia in 1630, and another in New England. Further sentences were issued in the late 18th century but all were either pardoned or simply hanged.

References

Footnotes

1. Women were considered the legal property of their husbands, and so a woman convicted of killing her husband was guilty not of murder, but petty treason. For disrupting the social order a degree of retribution was therefore required; hanging was considered insufficient for such a heinous crime.
2. Women's heads sometimes adorned the bridge; Elizabeth Barton was a domestic servant at Aldington in Kent who became a nun. After forecasting the early death of Henry VIII, she was drawn to Tyburn on 20 April 1534, and hanged and beheaded.
3. Although Harrison was a regicide, no such crime existed in English law and he was therefore charged with high treason.
4. A fourteenth, Henry Vane the Younger, was also executed, but for his religious beliefs, his politics, and his lack of contrition.

Notes

1. Milhorn 2004, p. 414
2. Diehl & Donnelly 2009, p. 58
3. Beadle & Harrison 2008, p. 11
4. Beadle & Harrison 2008, p. 12
5. Summerson, Henry (2008) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/12235 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12235, retrieved 18 August 2010 {{citation}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
6. Hamilton, J. S. (2008) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/7554 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7554, retrieved 19 August 2010 {{citation}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
7. Tanner 1940, p. 375
8. ^ Dubber 2005, pp. 24–25
9. Lee 2009, p. 156
10. ^ Fu, Peterson & Young 2005, pp. 152–153
11. Tanner 1940, pp. 375–376
12. Dubber 2005, p. 25
13. Caine & Sluga 2002, pp. 12–13
14. ^ Briggs 1996, p. 84
15. Blackstone et al. 1832, pp. 156–157
16. Jones 2007–2008, pp. 78–79
17. Naish 1991, p. 9
18. Lee 2009, pp. 156–157
19. Lee 2009, p. 157
20. Jones 2007–2008, pp. 81–82
21. Abbott 2005, pp. 158–159
22. Abbott 2005, pp. 159–160
23. Abbott 2005, pp. 160–161
24. draw (subscription required)[[Category:Pages containing links to subscription-only content]], Oxford English Dictionary (2 ed.), Oxford University Press, hosted at dictionary.oed.com, 1989, retrieved 18 August 2010. {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); URL–wikilink conflict (help)
25. Sharma 2003, p. 9
26. Mortimer, Ian (30 March 2010), Why do we say ‘hanged, drawn and quartered?’ (PDF), ianmortimer.com, retrieved 20 August 2010 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
27. Briggs 1996, p. 85
28. Jones 2007–2008, pp. 84–85
29. Jones 2007–2008, p. 81
30. Jones 2007–2008, pp. 83–84
31. Kastenbaum 2004, pp. 193–195
32. Jones 2007–2008, pp. 81, 83
33. Oman 1906, p. 5
34. Oman 1906, p. 75
35. Prescott, Andrew (2008) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/1214 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1214, retrieved 22 August 2010 {{citation}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
36. Waldron, Ronald (2008) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28030 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28030, retrieved 22 August 2010 {{citation}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
37. Smith, Llinos (2008) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/10816 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10816, retrieved 22 August 2010 {{citation}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
38. Steffan, Rhobert ap (7 Wales 2006), Llywelyn Ap Gruffydd Fychan, bbc.co.uk, retrieved 22 August 2010 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
39. Kohl, Benjamin G. (2006) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/27471 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27471, retrieved 22 August 2010 {{citation}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
40. ^ Haynes 2005, p. 12
41. ^ Abbott 2005, p. 161
42. Hogg, James (2008) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13867 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13867, retrieved 18 August 2010 {{citation}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
43. Jesse 1847, pp. 386–387
44. Hamilton, Dakota L. (2005) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/27242 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27242, retrieved 20 August 2010 {{citation}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
45. Trudgian, Raymond Francis (2008) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/18440 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18440, retrieved 19 August 2010 {{citation}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
46. Graves, Michael A. R. (2008) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/4539 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4539, retrieved 19 August 2010 {{citation}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
47. Warnicke, Retha M. (2008) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/4892 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4892, retrieved 19 August 2010 {{citation}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
48. Northcote Parkinson 1976, pp. 91–92
49. Fraser 2005, pp. 283
50. Allen 1973, p. 37 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFAllen1973 (help)
51. Thompson 2008, p. 102 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFThompson2008 (help)
52. Guy Fawkes, York Museums Trust, retrieved 16 May 2010 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
53. Morrill, John (2004), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/67460 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/67460, retrieved 19 August 2010 {{citation}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
54. ^ Nenner, Howard (September 2004), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.), Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/70599 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/70599, retrieved 16 August 2010 {{citation}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
55. ^ Abbott 2005, p. 158
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58. Zook 1999, p. 141
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74. Abbott 2005, pp. 161–162
75. Dubber 2005, p. 27
76. Ward 2009, p. 56

Bibliography

• Abbott, Geoffrey (2005) , Execution, a Guide to the Ultimate Penalty, Chichester, West Sussex: Summersdale Publishers Ltd., ISBN 184024433X
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• Blackstone, William; Christian, Edward; Chitty, Joseph; Hovenden, John Eykyn; Ryland, Archer (1832), Commentaries on the laws of England, vol. 2, Collins and Hannay
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• Caine, Barbara; Sluga, Glenda (2002), Gendering European History: 1780–1920, Continuum, ISBN 978-0826467751
• Diehl, Daniel; Donnelly, Mark P. (2009), The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment Through History, Sutton Publishing, ISBN 0750945834
• Dubber, Markus Dirk (2005), The police power: patriarchy and the foundations of American government, Columbia University Press, ISBN 0231132077
• Fraser, Antonia (2005) , The Gunpowder Plot, London: Phoenix, ISBN 0753814013
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• Joyce, James Avery (1955) , Justice at Work: The Human Side of the Law, London: Pan Books Ltd
• Kastenbaum, Robert (2004), "On our way: the final passage through life and death", Life Passages, vol. 3, University of California Press, ISBN 0520218809
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• Milhorn, H. Thomas (2004), Crime: Computer Viruses to Twin Towers, Universal-Publishers, ISBN 1581124899
• Moore, Charles; Booth, Cherie; Brandreth, Gyles; Weigel, George (2005), First things: The Moral, Social and Religious Challenges of the Day, London: Continuum International Publishing Group, ISBN 086012388X
• Naish, Camille (1991), Death comes to the maiden: sex and execution, 1431-1933, Taylor & Francis, ISBN 0415055857
• Northcote Parkinson, C. (1976), Gunpowder Treason and Plot, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, ISBN 0297772244
• Oman, Charles William Chadwick (1906), The Great Revolt of 1381, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• Poole, Steve (2000), The politics of regicide in England, 1760-1850: Troublesome subjects, Manchester: Manchester University Press, ISBN 0719050359
• Roberts, John Leonard (2002), The Jacobite wars: Scotland and the military campaigns of 1715 and 1745, Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 1902930290
• Sharma, S. R. (2003), Encyclopaedia of Jurisprudence, Anmol Publications PVT. Ltd, ISBN 8126114746
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• Tanner, Joseph Robson (1940), Tudor constitutional documents, A.D. 1485-1603: with an historical commentary (second ed.), CUP Archive
• Ward, Harry M. (2009), Going down hill: legacies of the American Revolutionary War, Academica Press,LLC, ISBN 1933146575
• Zook, Melinda S. (1999), Radical whigs and conspiratorial politics in late Stuart England, Penn State Press, ISBN 0271018569

Further reading

• Andrews, William (1890), Old-Time Punishments, Hull: William Andrews & Co.
• Block, Brian P.; Hostettler, John (1997), Hanging in the balance: a history of the abolition of capital punishment in Britain, Waterside Press, ISBN 1872870473

• Execution methods
• Torture
• English criminal law
• Medieval English law