Hanged, Drawn, and Quartered:

Hanged, drawn, and quartered was what the courts ordered as punishment for men convicted of the high crime of treason against the King of England. This sentence was considered to be the epitome of cruel and unusual punishment, so it was reserved for the heinous crime of treason.

First, the condemned were DRAWN or dragged to the place of execution. Then the accused were strung up to the gallows and HANGED by the neck until barely conscious, but they were not allowed to die. Next came disembowelment of the treasonous conspirators. Their genitalia and entrails burned right before their very own eyes.

Disembowelment and burning is not DRAWN, but is another grisly element of the sentence. Finally, the convicted had their heads chopped off, and their body QUARTERED into four more equal pieces. All five-body parts were gibbeted; put on public display in different parts of the city or country, depending on the severity of the treason. French Quartering on the other hand is very different from the English hanged, drawn, and quartered.

A. Ryan Robbins of ycopfiles.com wrote this article. Why cop files dot com? It's Computer Information Security articles for the Law Enforcement community! Follow me on FriendFeed. Track me on Twitter. Subscribe to my News Feeds for free. Or read the Blog Frog to learn more about me.

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