The sentence: hung, drawn and quartered
The trial began on January 27th 1606. The executions took place on January 30th.
The sentence read out to the convicted conspirators by the prosecution lawyer- “Each condemned prisoner will be drawn along to his death, backwards at a horses tail because he hath been retrograde to nature: his head should be near to the ground being not entitled to the common air.
- He is to be put to death halfway between heaven and earth as unworthy of both.
- His privy parts are to be cut off and burnt before his face since he himself has been unworthy begotten and is in turn unfit to leave any generation after him.
- The bowels and heart that has conceived of these terrible things are to be hacked out and the head which had imagined the mischief is to be cut off.
- Thereafter the various dismembered portions of the traitors are to be publically exposed, that they might become prey for the fowls of the air.”
The fate of Guy Fawkes and fellow conspirators, along with John Gerard, Jesuit priest, 1597 ...
Woodcut by
After Execution, public display
The heads of the plotters were spiked and displayed high above the Houses of Parliament for several months to act as a deterrent to further acts of treason.