If you lived in England circa fourteenth century, and you also happened to be guilty of “high treason” (significant disloyalty to your own government through particular actions such as waging war against said government, and sometimes spying), there was a good chance your punishment would be severe. For those found guilty of such acts, the penalty was “to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.”

While recordings of this punishment date back as early as the reign of King Henry III (1216 to 1272) and his successor Edward I (1272 to 1307), to be hanged, drawn, and quartered was an official penalty in England as of 1351.

The process was quite simple: Individuals convicted of the requisite crimes were fastened to a wooden hurdle (a portable part of a fence, usually made from branches and in more modern times metal) and then dragged by horse to the specific location where the execution was set to occur.Then, the subject was hanged in traditional fashion — but only to the point of near death, not actual death – followed by punishments of emasculation (removal of the genitals), disembowelment (the removal of some key internal organs), beheading (an act which needs no explanation), and then finally quartering. By tying the individual’s four limbs to a different horse and then sending each horse in a separate direction, the act of quartering was complete.

The official punishment was modified in 1814, reduced to mere death by hanging, and then followed by posthumous quartering.  The Treason Act of 1814 stated in part:

Whereas in certain cases of high treason, as the law now stands, the sentence or judgement required by law to be pronounced or awarded against persons convicted or adjudged guilty of the said crime in such cases is that they should be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution and there be hanged by the neck, but not until they are dead, but that they should be taken down again, and that when they are yet alive their bowels should be taken out and burnt before their faces, and that afterwards their heads should be severed from their bodies, and their bodies be divided into four quarters, and their heads and quarters to be at the King’s disposal: And whereas it is expedient in the said cases of high treason to alter the sentence or judgement now required by law.

In 1870 the punishment for high treason lessened further to simple hanging, thereby ending the days of death from being hanged, drawn, and quartered.

In its day, many of England’s rulers made use of the fabled punishment, including the Plantagenets (these kings ruled England from 1154 until 1485), the Tudors (Henry VIII declared that denying the validity of his marriage to Anne Boleyn was tantamount to treason, and then later declared that it was treason to maintain its validity), and the Stuarts. After the failed Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, 1,400 rebels were charged with treason, and in less than one month’s time 200 were executed in this manner.

William de Marisco was the first recorded victim of this punishment in 1242.  Although abolished in 1870, the legacy of death from hanged, drawn, and quartered lives on in movies such as Braveheart (1995), Kidnapped (1971), and more recently the television series The Tudors.

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Photograph from Webster’s Online Dictionary.