Elizabethan Punishments
There was a curious list of crimes that were punishable by death, including buggery, stealing hawks, highway robbery and letting out of ponds, as well as treason.
To deny that Elizabeth was the head of the Church in England, as Roman Catholics did, was to threaten her government and was treason, for which the penalty was death by hanging. But first, torture, to discover any fellow-plotters. Although in theory it was ‘greatly abhorred’, torture happened: and hideously. The Rack ‘tears a man’s limbs asunder’ – not literally, but it could snap the ligaments and cause excruciating pain. Perhaps the Pit was preferable, or the Little Ease, where a man couldn’t stand upright. The Scavenger’s Daughter was an ingenious system of compressing all the limbs in iron bands. For all of these an official order had to be given. Optional extras such as needles under the fingernails could be left to the examiner’s discretion.
Slavery was another sentence which is surprising to find in English history. From 1598 prisoners might be sent to the galleys if they looked strong enough to row.
Burning
Poisoners were burned at the stake, as were heretics such as Anabaptists. Two died in 1572, ‘in great horror with roaring and crying’.
Hanging
The usual place of execution in London was out on the road to Oxford, at Tyburn (just west of Marble Arch). But sometimes the jury, or the court, ordered another location, outside St Paul’s Cathedral, or where the crime had been committed, so that the populace could not avoid seeing the dangling corpses. Sometimes murderers were hanged alive, in chains, and left to starve.
Drawing and Quartering
Traitors were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. The grisly details included cutting the prisoner down before he died from hanging, and disembowelling him. After various other horrors, the corpse was cut into four pieces and the head was taken off. The quarters were nailed up in various places in London, and the head was displayed on a pole fixed over one of the gateways into the city, especially the gate on London Bridge.
Perhaps this deterred others from treasonable activities. But imagine the effect on innocent citizens as they went about their daily life, suddenly confronted with a rotting piece of human flesh, on a hot summer’s day.
Peine forte et dure
The words were a survival from the old system of Norman French law. This was, strictly speaking, a procedural hiccup rather than a punishment. The first step in a trial was to ask the accused how he pleaded. If he said he was not guilty, he faced trial, and the chances of acquittal were slim. If he pleaded guilty, or was found guilty by the court, all his property was forfeited to the Crown, leaving his family destitute. So a very brave and devoted man could refuse to answer, when asked to plead, knowing that he would die a painful and protracted death but his family could still claim his possessions. Heavy stones were piled on him and he was left in a dark cell, given occasional sips of foul water and stale bread until death came as a relief. Peine forte et dure was not formally abolished until 1772, but it had not been imposed for many years.
