Hanging
Why Hanging?
Para1Hanging in early modern England, like other numerous forms of physical punishment
such as whipping, the pillory, and the stocks, was meant as both punishment of the
convicted offender and a deterrent to members of the public who witnessed it. The
hanging humiliated the criminal since it was preceded by the offender being taken
to the gallows in an open cart, often along busy street lined with spectators who
hurled verbal abuse and garbage. Hanging also was meant as an act of retribution against
those who had committed murder, the most common reason for a hanging other than treason.
Para2Hanging offered the judicial system the swiftest punishment, as a permanent gallows
in London, called Tyburn Tree, were erected at the corner of Hyde Park in 1571. The
place had been a site of recorded executions since 1196. That gallows stood until
1759, when executions were moved to Newgate Prison. It was a large, triangular gallows
that could accommodate up to 24 executions on the same date.
Para3Hangings at Tyburn were held twelve times a year, so the people of London became accustomed
to the raucous public spectacle that accompanied them. In 1630, the poet John Taylor,
known as the Water Poet due to his work as a boatman on the river Thames in London,
published his poem,
The Description of Tyburn
I have heard sundry men oft times disputeOf trees, that in one year will twice bear fruit.But if a man note Tyburn, ‘will appear,That that’s a tree that bears twelve times a year.
Para4William Harrison’s Description of England, published in 1587, describes two varieties of hanging:
But if he be convicted of willful murder, done either upon pretended malice, or in any notable robbery, he is either hanged alive in chains near the place where the fact was committed (or else upon compassion taken first strangled with a rope) and so continued till his bones consume to nothing […]
When willful manslaughter is perpetrated, beside hanging, the offender has his right hand taken off before or near unto the place where the act was done, after which he is led forth to the place of execution, and there put to death according to the law.
Hanging, Drawing, and Quartering
Para5A much grislier form of punishment, mainly used on traitors, was being hanged, drawn,
and quartered. The convicted offender would be hanged until nearly dead, then be taken
down and mutilated, sometimes by drawing (slitting the belly) and sometimes also by quartering (cutting the body into pieces). This gruesome punishment was regularly used for traitors.
In the 16th century, it was regularly used to punish English Catholics such as Edmund
Campion. Campion was a celebrated Church of England priest who later converted to
Catholicism and fled to the religious order in Europe called the Jesuits. He returned
claendestinely to England to convert Protestants and was eventually captured and executed
for sedition and treason. This gruesome punishment that Campion and others suffered
did not fall out of use until the 19th century, when the last man in Britain to be
executed in this way was Colonel Edward Despard in 1803.
Key Print Sources
Barrett, Andrew, and Christopher Harrison. Crime and Punishment in England: A Sourcebook. UCL Press Ltd, 1999.
Royer, Katherine.
Dead Men Talking: Truth, Texts and the Scaffold in Early Modern England.Simon Devereaux, and Paul Griffiths. Penal Practice and Culture, 1500–1900: Punishing the English. Palgrave, 2004.
Weatherford, John W. Crime and punishment in the England of Shakespeare and Milton. McFarland, 2001.
Wilson, Frances.
A misfit put back together; Frances Wilson on the intriguing story of the last man in Britain to be hanged, drawn and quartered.Sunday Telegraph London, England, 11 Jul. 2004.
Key Online Sources
Best, Michael.
Hanging.Shakespeare’s Life and Times.Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/history/crime%20and%20the%20law/hanging.html. Accessed 18 Sep. 2018.
Crime and Punishment in Early Modern England.BBC Bitesize GCSE. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z3jb3j6/revision/4. Accessed 28 Feb. 2023.
Johnson, Ben.
Tyburn Tree and Speaker’s Corner.Historic UK Magazine. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/Tyburn-Tree-Speakers-Corner/. Accessed 28 Feb. 2023.
Martin, Randall.
Taking a Walk on the Wild Side: Henry Goodcole’s Heavens Speedie Hue and Cry Sent After Lust and Murther (1635) and London Criminal Chorography.Early Modern Literary Studies 14.3 (January, 2009) 6.1-34. http://purl.oclc.org/emls/14-3/Martgood.html. Accessed 28 Feb. 2023.
Prosopography
Aubrie Jones
Aubrie Jones was a student at Utah Valley University.
Kate McPherson
Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley
University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity
in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities
Institute,
Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom,at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.
Leah Hamby
Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed
several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from
Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her
other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.
Michael Best
Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the
Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the
ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery,
a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on
Electronic Shakespeares,and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.
Navarra Houldin
Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual
remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major
in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary
research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They
are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice
Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | Hanging |
| Type of text | Critical |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | Early Modern England Encyclopedia |
| Source |
By Aubrie Jones and Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
|
| Editorial declaration | This document uses Canadian English spelling |
| Edition | Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a |
| Sponsor(s) |
Early Modern England EncyclopediaAnthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
|
| Encoding description | Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines |
| Document status | published |
| Funder(s) |
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University |
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