Hanged, drawn and quartered

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To be hanged, drawn and quartered was a method of capital punishment used principally to execute men convicted of high treason in late medieval and early modern Britain and Ireland. Convicted traitors were fastened by the feet to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn behind a horse to the place of execution, where they were then hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered. Their remains would then often be displayed in prominent places across the country, such as London Bridge, to serve as a warning of the fate of traitors. The punishment was only ever applied to men; for reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burned at the stake. It became a statutory punishment in the Kingdom of England for high treason in 1352 under King Edward III, although similar rituals are recorded during the reign of King Henry III. The same punishment applied to traitors against the king in Ireland from the 15th century onward; William...

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