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Hanging, Drawing and Quartering

1910 New Catholic Dictionary

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A penalty of the English Criminal Code of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, inflicted on those found guilty of high treason touching the king's person or government. The person convicted was usually drawn on a sledge to the place of execution; there he was hung by the neck from a scaffold, being cut down and disembowelled while still alive; his head then was cut from his body and his corpse divided into four quarters. Many of the Catholic martyrs of England and Ireland, since the practise of their religion was declared high treason by law, suffered this cruel, barbarous death.