Hanging Hanging Author Aubrie Jones Author Kate McPherson Supervising Editor Kate McPherson Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Aubrie Jones and Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

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Why Hanging?

Hanging 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.

Hanging 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.

Hangings 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 dispute Of 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.

William 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

A 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.