Henry Cavill 2009 by David Shankbone. On The Tudors, Cavill plays Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, brother-in-law to Henry VIII of England

A friend gave me the DVD set for Season 2 of The Tudors.  The show has Baz Lurhmanned me into a passing interest with a time period I care little about: the days of Kings, Ladies and Knights.  King Arthur, Merlin, Elizebethean England and dragons were total duds to my imagination when I was young.  It made Shakespeare a challenge to enjoy.  I was into the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians.  Later, the French.

Maybe it’s the writing, maybe it’s the drama of the period or maybe it’s just Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Henry Cavill, but The Tudors had me flipping through Wikipedia articles on Anne Boleyn and Mary Queen of Scots.

I read about people who were executed with a sentence to be hanged, drawn and quartered.  I didn’t know what that meant, but I imagined it had something to do with getting hanged, your body dragged through the streets by a steed and then split apart.

The real horror of this sentence for treason was insane.  Wikipedia’s open teased me, and it delivered:

To be hanged, drawn and quartered was the penalty once ordained in England for the crime of high treason. It is considered by many to be the epitome of cruel punishment

To write “epitome” upped the ante.  This better be good.  Well, it was.  This has to be the most amazingly worst way a person could die (leaving aside any Saw scenarios):

Until reformed under the Treason Act 1814, the full punishment for the crime of treason was to be hanged, drawn and quartered in that the condemned prisoner would be:

1. Dragged on a hurdle (a wooden frame) to the place of execution. This is one possible meaning of drawn^.  The more likely meaning of Drawn is the act of disembowelment.
2. Hanged by the neck for a short time or until almost dead (hanged).
3. Disembowelled and emasculated and the genitalia and entrails burned before the condemned’s eyes (this is another meaning of drawn—see the reference to the Oxford English Dictionary below).
4. The body divided into four parts, then beheaded (quartered).

Typically, the resulting five parts (i.e. the four quarters of the body and the head) were gibbeted (put on public display) in different parts of the city, town, or, in famous cases, in the country, to deter would-be traitors who had not seen the execution. After 1814, the convict would be hanged until dead and the mutilation would be performed post-mortem. Gibbeting was later abolished in England in 1843, while drawing and quartering was abolished in 1870.

Worst way to die.  Ever.  People who did:  Guy Fawkes, Rodrigo Lopez and Edmund Campion.  Additionally, the corpses of Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton were disinterred and hanged, drawn and quartered in posthumous execution.

Ever.