King Edward III

As anyone who has watched Braveheart knows, the penalty for High Treason in medieval in times for men, was to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. This punishment became the statutory punishment for the crime during the reign of King Edward III.

The process was a long drawn out gruesome one, aimed at making the traitor suffer and acting as a deterrent to others. The accused was tied to a wooden panel, called a hurdle, and drawn by horse to the place of execution, where he was then hanged almost to the point of death, emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered. The remains would then be displayed in prominent places across the country. Women were not subjected to this, their punishment for High Treason was the equally terrifying fate of being burned at the stake.

High Treason was an attack on the authority of the English monarch and thus was considered to be a deplorable crime that could not be taken lightly and demanded the harshest possible punishment.

Before being the penalty of choice, the punishment for High Treason varied, being drawn and hung until death was one, but for more severe cases disemboweling or burning or beheading, and quartering were often used. These punishments would be combined to create one of the most grisly and memorable death penalties in history.

One of the first recorded incidents of this new combo punishment was in 1283 under the reign of Edward I, and inflicted on the Welsh prince David ap Gruffudd. He was drawn for treason, hanged for homicide, disemboweled for sacrilege, and beheaded and quartered for plotting the king’s death. And a new death penalty was born!

Sources:

The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment Through History, Daniel Diehl and Mark P. Donnelly

Firsts, Lasts & Onlys: Crime, Jeremy Beadle and Ian Harrison

Ways of Medieval Life and Thought, Frederick Maurice Powicke