PREPARE TO BE HUNG, DRAWN AND QUARTERED!!!
Something new drops tomorrow. Here's what you need to know first
If you’ve been paying attention, you will have noticed there’s a new video coming soon.
It’s called HUNG DRAWN AND QUARTERED.
As Bill & Ted said, strange things are afoot in the Circle K.
In the meantime, should you want a bit of background on hanging, drawing and quartering - and its historical origins in the Plantagenet era, here’s something I wrote about it last year:
Dafydd ap Gruffudd, prince of Wales, was condemned to die by an English parliament convened in the Anglo-Welsh border town of Shrewsbury in September 1283. His death was to be cruel and unusual. Dafydd considered himself a freedom fighter, defending the rights of the native Welsh to live as they wished, according to their own laws and customs, and not under the rule of their hated neighbours to the east. The English saw things otherwise. For many years Norman and Plantagenet kings had invested time, money and blood into conquering Wales, and stubborn resistance led by men like Dafydd had begun to test their patience. Letters summoning English magnates to attend the Shrewsbury parliament complained that ‘the tongue of man can scarcely recount the evil deeds committed by the Welsh... from time within memory’, and described Dafydd as ‘the last survivor of [a] family of traitors’. It was time to make an example of him.
Parliament did not take long to decide Dafydd’s fate. On the basis that he had plotted to kill king Edward I, Dafydd was found guilty of treason. He was sentenced to be the first person in British history to be hanged, drawn and quartered. This was a horrible way to die, as Dafydd found out at first hand. Having been taken from his prison cell at Rhuddlan Castle in north Wales, he was dragged behind a horse to the scaffold in Shrewsbury, where he was strung up by his neck and left to struggle and choke for a while. Then he was cut down by the executioner, a townsman called Geoffrey, who proceeded to slice out his intestines with a butcher’s blade. Only then was Dafydd put out of his misery: beheaded and hacked into four pieces, each of which was sent to a different English city as an advertisement of his fate. Exactly where the pieces ended up was not recorded by the chroniclers. But his head went south. It was set up on a spike at the Tower of London – the brooding fortress that overlooked England’s capital city.
Dafydd’s death was a grisly piece of political theatre, which introduced a dread new punishment to England. It extinguished a great line of Welsh princes, and it struck a severe blow to Welsh hopes of ever wriggling free of English dominion. Both of these were important political and cultural landmarks in Britain’s medieval history.
From Powers & Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages (Head of Zeus/Viking, 2021)
More to follow…
ALWAYS down for a Bill and Ted reference 🎸
I remember my English teacher explaining that the past tenses of 'to hang' were 'hung' and 'have hung', but when the gallows were involved it's 'to be hanged'. He went on to inform us about being hanged, drawn and quartered. Learn it young and you'll never forget 😁