Voices in Time

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In cases of felony, manslaughter, robbery, murder, rape, piracy, and such capital crimes as are not reputed for treason or hurt of the state, our sentence pronounced upon the offender is to hang till he be dead. For of other punishments used in other countries we have no knowledge or use—and yet so few grievous crimes committed with us as elsewhere in the world. To use torment, also, or question by pain and torture in these common cases, with us is greatly abhorred, since we are found always to be such as despise death and yet abhor to be tormented, choosing rather frankly to open our minds than to yield our bodies unto such servile halings and tearings as are used in other countries. And this is one cause wherefore our condemned persons do go so cheerfully to their deaths, for our nation is free, stout, haughty, prodigal of life and blood, and therefore cannot in any wise digest to be used as villains and slaves, in suffering continually beating, servitude, and servile torments. No, our jailers are guilty of felony by an old law of the land if they torment any prisoner committed to their custody for the revealing of his complices.

The greatest and most grievous punishment used in England for such as an offence against the state is drawing from the prison to the places of execution upon an hurdle or sled, where they are hanged till they be half-dead and then taken down and quartered alive; after that, their members and bowels are cut from their bodies and thrown into a fire provided near-hand and within their own sight, even for the same purpose. Sometimes, if the trespass be not the more heinous, they are suffered to hang till they be quite dead. And whensoever any of the nobility are convicted of high treason by their peers, that is to say, equals (for an inquest of yeomen passeth not upon them, but only of the lords of the Parliament), this manner of their death is converted into the loss of their heads only, notwithstanding that the sentence do run after the former order. In trial of cases concerning treason, felony, or any other grievous crime not confessed, the party accused doth yield, if he be a nobleman, to be tried by an inquest (as I have said) of his peers; if a gentleman, by gentlemen; and an inferior, by God and by the country, to wit, the yeomanry—and being condemned of felony, manslaughter, etc., he is eftsoons hanged by the neck till he be dead and then cut down and buried. But if he be convicted of willful murder done either upon pretended malice or in any notable robbery, he is either hanged alive in chains near the place where the fact was committed or else, upon compassion taken, first strangled with a rope, and so continueth till his bones consume to nothing. We have use neither of the wheel nor of the bar as in other countries; but when willful manslaughter is perpetrated, beside hanging, the offender hath his right hand commonly stricken off before or near unto the place where the act was done, after which he is led forth to the place of execution and there put to death according to the law.

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