DRAWN, HANGED, AND QUARTERED.
There has been much confusion as to the punishment of “drawing,” forming down to times comparatively recent a portion of the punishment awarded to those found guilty of high treason. The correct order of the several punishments in such cases is drawing, hanging, and quartering. But to-day every one inverts the order, putting hanging first. Even the old chroniclers sometimes make this mistake. The proper order is inverted by Capgrave, the Grey Friars’ Chronicler, and by Latimer in his third sermon. Owing to this mistake it has not infrequently been assumed that drawing was a process following hanging, and consisted in drawing out the bowels of the victim. In fact, drawing meant dragging along the ground. There were three kinds of drawing. In the vast majority of cases drawing means dragging to the place of execution, where hanging, disembowelling and quartering followed. But drawing sometimes means dragging till the sufferer died of the mere dragging. In some cases drawing means tugging by horses in opposite directions till the sufferer was torn to pieces. It is not in all cases easy to say what punishment is indicated by the chroniclers, who use indifferently the words “tractus,” “detractus,” and “distractus.”[39]
Examples of the first kind of drawing, dragging to the foot of the gallows, for execution, are superabundant. There were degrees in this. In the earliest times the victim, stripped to his shirt, with his arms tied behind his back, was thus dragged along the rough and miry road—how rough and miry it is almost impossible for us at this day to realise.[40] That any human being could survive such a drawing from Newgate to Tyburn is marvellous. But the way was not uncommonly longer, from the Tower to Tyburn, or even longer still, from Westminster to the Tower, and then from the Tower to Tyburn. In the case of William Longbeard,[41] it would appear that sharp stones were placed on the road to be followed. But, apart from any such aggravation, the sufferer would probably in most cases be found at the end of the journey incapable of further suffering.
In 1295 Tuberville was drawn on a fresh ox-hide (sur un quir de bof fres), and one of the chroniclers expressly states that he was so drawn that he might not die too quickly.[42] Something was also due to sentiments of humanity. There is a case recorded from which it is clear that “humanitarianism” was as odious to the judges of old time as it is to-day to the advocates of flogging. The case finds a record in the old books, because in it the judge evidently strained the law. A man was arraigned in 1340, before Justice Shard, on an indictment charging him with the murder of “his master.” It was found that murder had indeed been done by the man, who, however, had for a year ceased to be the murdered man’s servant. Shard inquired whether the servant had not a grudge against his master, and did he watch him? The questions were answered affirmatively, and Shard sentenced the man to death as guilty of petty treason—the punishment due to a servant who killed his master. Shard ordered that the man should be drawn by horses from the court in which he was tried, and forbade, under pain of imprisonment, that any friars or other persons should place a hurdle or anything else under him.[43]
Whether owing to compassion or to the ferocity of judges who had discovered that the drawing as at first practised rendered a victim insensible to the spectacle of the burning of his own bowels, it is certain that the ox-hide became an established institution, for in a case later than Turberville we hear of “the common ox-hide.” This in its turn gave place to the hurdle, and this to the sledge—no doubt to the infinite disgust of judges like Shard.
The following is a case in which drawing was carried out till the death of the sufferers from mere dragging:—
There were frequent and bitter disputes between the citizens of Norwich and the prior. These disputes came to a head in 1271, when, in a quarrel at the gates of the priory, two citizens were killed. The townsmen flew to arms. The men of the priory retreated within the walls and prepared for a siege. The citizens, unable to force the gates of the priory, tore down the doors of the church. The prior threatened excommunication: the citizens demanded redress for the killing of two of their number. Finally, the prior put in execution his threat of excommunication: the citizens retorted by seizing provisions on their way to the priory. The prior now disposed his men in the belfry, and fighting went on for some days. At last the citizens set fire to the belfry: the fire spread till almost all the conventual buildings were destroyed. The citizens rushed in, killing all, monks and laymen, they could find; they destroyed everything on which they could lay hands. The bishop and other priests gathered together outside Norwich, excommunicated nine men by name, and all others who had taken part in the matter. The case was grave: the king came down, and spent twelve days in investigating the case, with the aid of his justices, and forty knights as jurors. The finding was that the prior was the cause of the burning of the church, and the king therefore took the manors of the priory into his own hands. But a terrible penalty was exacted from the citizens, thirty-three of whom were put to death: some were hanged, some burnt, others were drawn by horses (equis distracti). What is meant in this case is revealed by one chronicler, who gives details of the drawing: “Attached to horses by the feet, they were dragged through the streets of the city till, after great suffering, they ended their lives and expired.”[44]
The chroniclers record only, I think, one case in which it is made clear the victim was actually dragged to pieces, as we see in old pictures of the martyrdom of St. Hippolytus:—
“In 1238, King Henry III., being at Woodstock, a certain learned squire came to the court. He feigned madness, and demanded of the king that he should give up the crown. The king’s attendants sought to drive him away, but the king forbade this. In the middle of the night the man came again, bearing an open knife. He made his way into the king’s bed-chamber, but the king was not there, being with the queen. But one of the queen’s maids, Margaret Bisseth, was awake, and, sitting by the light of a candle, sang psalms (for she was a holy maid, and one devoted to the service of God). Margaret gave the alarm, and the man was secured. He declared that he had been sent by William Marsh on purpose to kill the king. On learning this, the king ordered that, as one guilty of an attempt to kill the king’s majesty, he should be torn by horses limb from limb, a terrible example, and a lamentable spectacle to all who should dare to plot such crimes. In the first place he was drawn asunder, then beheaded, and his body was divided into three parts, each of which was dragged through one of the greatest cities of England, and afterwards hung on the robbers’ gibbet.”[45]
We come now to the question of the punishment for high treason, regarded as the greatest of all crimes, one therefore to be punished with all possible severity. Treason was elaborately defined by 25 Edward III., st. 5. c. 2, but the statute does not prescribe punishment for the offence. Treason seems to have been held to include a number of distinct crimes, to each of which a distinct punishment was allotted. This is the sentence when it had been settled in a form which, with an alteration to be noted presently, endured for centuries:—
“1. That the aforesaid … be drawn to the gallows of …
2. He is there to be hanged by the neck, and let down alive.
3. His bowels are to be taken out,
4. And, he being alive, to be burnt.
5. His head is to be cut off.
6. His body is to be divided into four parts,
7. And his head and quarters are to be placed where our lord the king shall direct.”
There is no doubt that, originally, the prisoner was drawn to the gallows immediately after trial, but later, the first clause was made to run that the prisoner should be taken from the court to the place whence he came (the prison), and from thence to the place of execution. The sentence is given in this later form by Sir William Stanford in his work, “Les Plees del Coron.” 1560, fols. 182, 182b.
It is difficult to say when the sentence, as given above, was first carried out. In relating the execution in 1283 of David, Prince of Wales, the chroniclers give the several punishments in this order: drawing, hanging, beheading, disembowelling, quartering.[46] This is not quite conclusive, as will be seen by the next instance.
In 1305 we come to the condemnation and execution of Sir William Wallace. The sentence, in a highly rhetorical form, states the punishments in the order in which they are given in the case of Prince David, making beheading precede disembowelling. But accounts of the execution given by chroniclers leave no doubt that the punishments followed in what became the usual order, namely, that Wallace, being let down alive, was first disembowelled, beheading following, not preceding this.[47] It may well be, therefore, that in the execution of David the order of punishments, as carried out, differed from their order in the sentence. But we have no evidence of this. Going on the evidence, we may say that in the case of Wallace we have the first recorded instance in which what became the usual punishment for treason was carried out.
It will be observed that the execution of Wallace (see footnote), included ementulation (abscisis genitalibus) which was not prescribed by the sentence. There is a mystery about this clause. It does not appear in the form of sentence as given by Coke in his “Institutes,” yet in passing sentence in 1615 on John Owen, alias Collins, he expressly includes ementulation, and gives elaborate reasons why this should form part of the sentence. Again, taking a group of sentences passed in connection with the Popish Plot, we find that ementulation forms part of the sentence in the cases of Ireland, Pickering, and Grove, the “Five Jesuits” and Langhorn, Lord Stafford, Lionel Anderson and others tried with him. It is not found in the sentences passed on Stayley, Coleman, Fitzharris, and Plunket. The law books throw no light on the point; one only mentions the difference without attempting to explain it.[48]
It would seem that a Scot was the first on whom this horrible series of punishments is recorded to have been inflicted. Scots were the last to suffer the penalties of high treason, inflicted in their greatest rigour: these were the men condemned for the Rebellion of 1745.
In July, 1746, seventeen were sentenced according to the usual form: of these, eight were reprieved, the other nine being executed on Kennington Common on July 30th. One of these was Townley:—
“After he had hung six minutes, he was cut down, and, having life in him, as he lay upon the block to be quartered, the executioner gave him several blows on his breast, which not having the effect designed, he immediately cut his throat: after which he took his head off: then ripped him open, and took out his bowels and heart, and threw them into a fire which consumed them: then he slashed his four quarters, and put them with the head into a coffin, and they were carried to the new gaol in Southwark, where they were deposited till Saturday, August 2, when his head was put on Temple Bar, and his body and limbs suffered to be buried.”[49]
The last exhibition of this kind was in 1820, when Thistlewood and four others, some of them victims of a plot fostered by the Government, were hanged outside Newgate, their heads being afterwards publicly cut off by a masked man suspected to be a surgeon. The bodies were not quartered. The thing had by this time degenerated into a brutal and bloody farce.