A quiet hanging was little to the taste of either the dispensers of justice or of vengeance, or of the crowds that gathered at executions in those rude days, or, indeed, in the days of the Tudors, or even of Charles II. Common malefactors were swung upon a gibbet and left there, no more trouble was bestowed upon them; but for the plotter against the State, the process of death was more elaborate. References to the victims being “hanged, drawne, and quartered” abound. It is impossible within the limits of decency to describe in detail the revolting tortures and mutilations practised upon the poor wretches whom ill-fortune brought to Tyburn. What the sentence implied can be found in the State Trial of the Duke of Buckingham, where it was delivered in all its unabashed nakedness by the Earl of Norfolk, though Henry VIII. substituted decapitation. What it meant in actual practice may be judged from the records of the punishment of those concerned in the Babington Plot against Queen Elizabeth. Fifteen men were condemned to die, and after a day and a half had been spent on the ghastly work, leaving it still incomplete, the Queen, disgusted with the sickening business, bade the executioners “despatch with haste” the remaining victims, remitting the last abominations. It was the earliest custom to tie the wretched victim by the heels, attach him by a rope to a horse’s tail, and thus drag him from gaol to the place of execution. Arrived at his destination, jeered and howled at all the way, and sorely bruised as he jolted over the rough roads to his death, he was placed on the gibbet. The rope, after much fumbling, was adjusted mid the yells of the spectators, and then the prisoner was hoisted on high by the executioner and his assistant, until slow suffocation ended his misery. Later, for humanity’s sake, a rough hurdle was utilised, to which the condemned man was bound, and on this he was dragged to the gallows. Not until Stuart times was the malefactor’s springless cart introduced.