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[RIDDELL] CANADIAN STATE TRIALS 333 
(3) and your bowels taken out 
(4) and burned before your face (or you being still alive) 
(5) then your head must be severed from your body 
(6) which must be divided into four parts, and 
(7) your head and quarters to be at the King’s disposal. 
It is probable that originally there was no interval between sentence and execution 
and the unhappy convict was drawn at once to the gallows; but at least as early as 
the sixteenth century the prisoner was ordered first to be taken to the place whence 
he came and thence to the place of execution. Stanford’s ‘‘Les Plees del Coron’’ 
(dated 1560) foll. 182. 182b. 
(1) Even in quarters usually well informed there is occasionally to be found a 
misunderstanding of the meaning of ‘‘drawn’”’ in this sentence. It is supposed to be 
equivalent to ‘‘eviscerated,”’ asa market woman “‘draws’’ a chicken. It really means 
that the convict is to be dragged to the gallows. Originally he was dragged by the 
heels at the horse’s tail over the rough and filthy ground, which sometimes killed the 
victim. Sometimes, as in the case of William Longbeard in 1196, rough stones were 
‘placed in the road to make the transit more painful. 
But humanity was not wholly dead, and we find sometimes an ox-hide, some- 
times a hurdle spread under the sufferer by friars or others. Mr. Justice Shaw in 
1340 forbade this in a peculiarly atrocious case of a servant killing his former master. 
The ‘‘common oxhide” became an institution, and it later gave way to the 
hurdle. From contemporary woodcuts it appears that the hurdle was of wicker, flat 
and oblong, about seven by four feet. The prisoner was bound in it, feet toward the 
horse, which was attached to the hurdle and drew it along like a stone-boat. Later the 
sledge came into use, although the word ‘“‘hurdle’”’ was used to denote it, and by the 
time of McLane every convict who was to be drawn to the gallows had a ‘‘hurdle” 
to ride on. 5 
(2) While the express words of the sentence prohibited hanging until death 
it came to be the practice to allow death to intervene before cutting down. This was 
not always the case, as when Townley was executed on Kennington Common in 
July 1716 (See R. v. Townley, 1746, 18 St. Tr 829) life was found in him when he 
was cut down and the executioner failing to kill him by blows on the chest, immediately 
cut his throat. 
(3) While sometimes the whole of the viscera, thoracic and abdominal, were 
taken out, in the course of time, in most cases only a small incision was made and a 
small part of the viscera was burnt. 
(4) A platform was placed near the gallows on which a fire was lit and the 
entails burnt. ‘ : 
(5) “The Head of a Traitor” was always held aloft and shown to the spectators 
by the Executioner. 
(6) While originally the body was always quartered and the parts usually 
sent to different parts of the Kingdom, the practice grew up of simply nicking the 
limbs at their junction with the trunk, which was taken as a symbolic quartering. 
Sometimes an additional monstrosity was added, ementulation,—e.g. William 
Wallace the Scottish Patriot suffered thus: 
“Primo per plateas Londonie ad caudas equinas tractus usque ad patibulum 
altissimum sibi fabricatum, quo laqueo suspensus, postea semivivus dimissvus, deinde 
abscisis genitalibus et evisceratis intestinis ac in ignem crematis, demum absciso 
capite ac trunco in quatuor partes secto, caput palo super pontem Londoniae 
affigitur; quadrifida vero membra ad partes Scotiae sunt transmissa”’ (“Flores 
Hist.,’”’ ed. Luard, iii. 124). 
