Hanging, Drawing and Quartering

The climactic execution scene in Braveheart has given many the idea that this gruesome punishment was invented by Edward I especially for William Wallace.  In fact, the idea if not the procedure predates Wallace by several years.  Treason was a serious offense in any Medieval kingdom, calling for gruesome punishments.  One of the most serious of any treasonable offenses was to attempt to assassinate a king, as God's representative on earth.  In 1238, a soldier attempted to assassinated Henry III.  Henry reacted as one would expect, by ordering a punishment that would fit the crime.  The man was dragged to the place of execution behind a horse, beheaded, then his body divided into three parts.  Each port was then dragged through one of the larger cities in England, including London, and then staked on a gibbet as a warning for anyone else who might attempt the same crime.  Later, it was discovered that the man had been an agent of a known outlaw, William de Marisco, who was captured and received a similar punishment in 1242.

The next high-profile traitor to receive the sentence was Dafydd ap Gruffydd, who proclaimed himself Prince of Wales and rose against King Edward.  After he was captured, the punishment was refined, each portion of the process representing a part of the crime committed.  After being drawn to his place of execution behind a horse, he was hanged alive for the killing of various English nobles.  For further killings, he was eviscerated while still alive and his entrails burned.  For conspiring to kill the king, his body was quartered into four pieces and the pieces sent to four cities in England.  Finally, he was beheaded and his head spiked on London Bridge.  In 1305, William Wallace suffered the same fate.  His quarters were sent to Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling and Perth as a particular lesson to rebellious Scots.

Hugh Despenser the Younger, one of the King Edward II's favorites, also suffered the punishment, which was part of common law but not officially codified as the penalty for treason.  Edward III fixed that in 1351 by issuing the Statue of Treasons, which official defined what constituted treason in English law, and fixed the penalty as hanging, drawing and quartering for men and burning at stake for women.  Nobles could have their sentence commuted to beheading at the King's pleasure.  The drawing referred to two portions of the punishment.  Offenders were initially bound and dragged behind a horse.  However, this often meant that they arrived at the scaffold barely alive and thus cheated the executioner.  A hurdle, or wooden or wicker pallet was substituted instead.  However, crowds often vented their anger on notorious criminals.  Wallace was struck with whips and stones, beaten by the crowd and had rotten food and sewage thrown at him.  The other portion of the punishment was the evisceration, which was also called drawing a the time.  In particular, the emasculation portion of the punishment for men was a symbol that their offspring were corrupted by blood, i.e., unable to inherit their property through attainder after conviction.

Hanging, drawing and quartering remained the official punishment for treason, which also encompassed religious heresy, through the reign Elizabeth I, when many English Catholics and foreign missionaries were executed by the method.  The Regicides were also executed by Charles II for having brought about the death of his father, Charles I.   It was the official penalty still on the books during the American Revolution, which meant that the Founding Fathers were actually taking their lives into their hands by signing the Declaration of Independence.  It was applied after an uprising in 1817, and modified for the perpetrators of the Cato Street Conspiracy in 1820.  They were beheaded and their heads removed by a surgeon.  The penalty was ultimately abolished in 1870.