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 Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

Unless otherwise noted, intellectual copyright in EMEE Anthology pages is held by Kate McPherson on behalf of the contributors. Copyright on the TEI-XML markup is held by the University of Victoria on behalf of the LEMDO Team. The content and TEI-XML markup in this file are licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. This file is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and /or data; (2) this availability statement must remain in the file; (3) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (4) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited.

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

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

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Editor A person, family, or organization contributing to a resource by revising or elucidating the content, e.g., adding an introduction, notes, or other critical matter. An editor may also prepare a resource for production, publication, or distribution. For major revisions, adaptations, etc., that substantially change the nature and content of the original work, resulting in a new work, see author. LEMDO uses the general term editor only in edition metadata and only to indicate when a person is responsible for editing all parts of an edition. Otherwise, use the more granular terms to describe the precise nature of the editorial role. Supervising Editor An editor who supervises the work of a student editor. Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Daily Life Crime Punishment Published file. Updated metadata proofed updated author respStmt. added term and gloss tags. Created File. Michael Best 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.

 Leah Hamby 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.

 Navarra Houldin 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.

 Aubrie Jones Aubrie Jones

Aubrie Jones was a student at Utah Valley University.

 Kate McPherson 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.

 LEMDO Team 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 https://www.uvic.ca/
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.