Introduction to The English Execution Narrative, 1200-1700.pdf

7/27/2019 Introduction to The English Execution Narrative, 1200-1700.pdf

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INTRODUCTION: SETTING UP THE

SCAFFOLD IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY

MODERN ENGLAND

Te disembowelled, hanged, castrated, burned, beheaded and dismembered bodyo the executed criminal in late medieval and early modern England has shocked,intrigued and ascinated historians, who or the last thirty years have primarily

viewed the execution ritual as a maniestation o a specic technology o power,an important step in the states long march to a monopoly o violence and a sym-bol o what makes medieval man the other. Yet the violence o these events has sooverwhelmed their interpretation that it has ofen crowded out all other consid-erations and lef many historians so distracted by what was done to the body onthe scaffold that they have ofen ailed to look closely at the history o the ritual.

What has requently been missed is that there was no single interpretation o a

ritual that lasted or over ve hundred years. Te ceremonies described in thisbook were read in different ways across the centuries o their history, or as DavidGarland has argued, punishment is a social arteact that is not wholly explicablein terms o its purpose it has a cultural style, a historical tradition and a depend-ence on discursive conditions all o which change with time.1Punishment isalso the product o the political exigencies that shape its purpose. Tus, a ritualthat began in England in the thirteenth century and ended in the eighteenth cen-tury cannot be expected to have a single interpretation.

Te English Execution Narrative is a new look at the descriptions o an oldritual: the execution o traitors, heretics and common criminals rom the thir-teenth century through to the seventeenth century. Te thirteenth century ischosen as the entry point because it was the century in which these rituals o

punishment were rst ormalized in England. Tis book ends in the seventeenthcentury as the viability o the public execution as an exemplary strategy thatserved the interests o the state began to be called into question. Using contem-

porary accounts o these events, this work explores more than what happened tothe body o the condemned. It examines the many ways the body on the scaffoldconveyed meaning, or that body was more than just the object o a technology


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2 Te English Execution Narrative, 12001700

o power. In a series o chapters on the descriptions o dismembered traitors; therole o blood as a representational device; the changing relationship betweendeath, time and descriptions o the body on the scaffold; the role o clothing inthe construction o identity in the execution narrative; and the history o therelationship between body and the last dying speech in the pamphlet literature,this book explores how over the course o ve centuries the role o the body onthe scaffold shifed as the message o the execution ritual was swept up in rap-idly moving currents o political and religious change. Tese topics are woventogether to argue that the conceptual resources that rst ormed the executionritual in the thirteenth century were challenged by a series o cultural shifs and

political crises that led this ceremony to be reported in a series o different waysrom late medieval to early modern England.

As Renato Rosaldo has reminded us, rituals are ofen a busy intersectionwhere a number o distinct social processes traverse.2Although what was done tothe body o the condemned remained essentially the same in England across theve centuries covered in this book, the ritual itsel was a crossroads where mul-tiple cultural orces came in contact.3Te same was true or the narratives thatdescribed these events. Tereore, any analysis o these texts cannot be divorcedrom political exigencies, cultural change or religious conict. However, thecontingent nature o both these executions and the narratives that describedthem have ofen been ignored, as all eyes have ocused on the brutality o the

pre-modern ritual. For example, Michel Foucault revels in the violence on the

scaffold. It orms the centrepiece o his riveting description o the execution oDamiens in the introduction to Discipline and Punish.4 However, Foucault islike an audience who comes in during the second act o a play, having missedthe rst part o the story, or Damiens was executed in 1757, which was airlylate in the history o theatrical justice.5Te spectacles o suffering analysed byFoucault and historians such as Richard van Dlem and Richard Evans were

primarily rom the early modern period by which time spectacular justice wasalready several centuries old.6And, as Esther Cohen has pointed out, in France

penal practice actually became more brutal with time which complicates thebroader application o Foucaults analysis to the longer history o the ritual.7Sothe centuries-long history o these rituals has been largely overlooked in much othe scholarship on capital punishment which requently starts the story, as doesFoucault, in the age o the absolutist state.8

O the major monographs on capital punishment, only Petrus Spierenburg,Esther Cohen and Paul Friedland have taken the history o this ritual back to

when spectacular justice was born in the late Middle Ages. Primarily interestedin the intersection between legal history and popular culture, Cohen argues that

punishment in late medieval France was steeped in long-standing extra-judicial


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Introduction 3

popular practices that were then employed by authorities to draw boundaries andenunciate norms, both old and new.9As a result, a dialectic emerged in the thir-teenth century between customary and written law. Her conceptualization o themultivalent nature o late medieval law is important to understanding the execu-tion ritual on both sides o the Channel, but Cohen is primarily interested in thebroader picture and does not explore in detail the specic political exigencies thatled the authorities in France to draw particular boundaries. Neither does PetrusSpierenburg, who links the rise o theatrical justice writ large to the emergenceo stronger rulers in the twelfh century.10His Whiggish take on the history othe execution ritual is problematic when applied to England, or weak kings were

periodically a problem or the English state, which removed three o them rompower between the thirteenth and feenth centuries, killed one on the battleeldin the feenth century and ormally executed another in the seventeenth.11 As therst chapter will demonstrate, there was no long steady march to a monopoly o

violence in England. Instead, advances were ofen ollowed by retreats. Tereore,the practice o theatrical justice in England was inuenced by a series o crises thatsometimes challenged,and at other times empowered, the English state.

Paul Friedlands work on capital punishment in France is the most chrono-logically comprehensive o this scholarship, or he, alone among these historians,explores the early medieval history o capital punishment. Primarily interestedin the intersection between theory and practice, Friedland does not examine theinuence o specic events on the practice o punishment but rather concentrates

on the gradual layering o penal traditions that led to the advent o spectacularjustice in late medieval France.12Because he works in the longue dure, Friedlandidenties a series o changes in the reception o the execution ritual in France, someo which parallel what was happening in England, such as the impact o the Re-ormation on the behaviour o the condemned and the eventual development osensibility among the elite regarding the spectatorship at these events. So there

were certainly cultural orces that inuenced attitudes toward punishment thatwere European wide. Tat said, political crises, which were ofen regionally, i notnationally, specic, also had an impact on the history o the ritual. However, likemany historians o capital punishment in pre-modern Europe, Friedland is primar-ily concerned with the larger picture and is less interested in context.

Although spectacular justice was the product o cultural currents that were

common to both England and the Continent, one o the problems with theapplication o much o this Continental scholarship to England is that most othe work on the pre-modern execution ritual has been ltered through the prismo the inquisitional legal system. However, afer the Fourth Lateran Councilabolished trial by ordeal in 1215, the legal systems o England and the Conti-nent diverged.13On the Continent, Roman standards o proo made conession,ofen obtained through torture, the centrepiece o criminal jurisprudence.


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England, on the other hand, developed a jury system which allowed circumstan-tial evidence and so never offi cially employed torture in the search or truth.Although torture was used sporadically in England, especially in the sixteenthcentury, it was never an offi cially recognized part o the judicial system.14So eventhough Anne Askew had been tortured in 1546, in 1565 Tomas Smith wrote

proudly inDe Republica Anglorum,

torment or question which is used by the order o the civil lawe and custome o othercountries to put a maleactor to excessive paine, to make him conesse himsele, or ohis ellowes or accomplices, is not used in England as it is taken or servile.15

Although there has been a debate about how much Roman law inuenced theEnglish legal system afer the twelfh century, the English did ollow a differ-ent procedural path and with their jury trails and open court proceedings, hadno need or a ceremony that Foucault argues was necessary in order to publiclyaffi rm a verdict passed in secret by the court.16Tereore, English legal excep-tionalism complicates the broader application o some o the Continentalscholarship to England.

Te English also never used the wheel, ayed their criminals or burnedtheir esh with hot pincers, as their repertoire o offi cial punishments wasmore limited than that ound on the Continent. On the local level, they couldbe inventive, burying people alive or tying them to docks at low tide, but these

were borough customs; whereas the punishments o the Crown were staid by

Continental standards.17

So the more operatic depictions o executions ound inLionel Puppis orment in Artare rom the Continent and not England.18Forexample, the Venetian ambassadors description o the execution o the assassino Henry IV, Ravillac, reports that:

At eight that morning they began the torture o the rogue, and then they continuedon Wednesday and Tursday and he being in poor condition because o the losso blood, he was condemned to have, that same day, which was Tursday, his handburned with lead, sulphur and other things, to be given eighteen strokes with redhot things, then quartered by our horses, his body burned and his ashes scattered.19

Foucault believes that this excess o violence in all its glory was another ormo the ordeal a physical challenge that dened the truth.20 However, as exe-

cutions on the Continent became rituals o prolonged torture that sometimeslasted days, the physical punishments o the English ritual remained largelyunchanged. John Fisher died in 1535 in much the same way as William Wallacein 1305.21Tey were both drawn, quartered and disembowelled. Te Englishritual was violent to be sure, but its brutality did not increase in intensity withtime.22Tere is also the problem that the amende honorable,which has heavilyinuenced the Continental interpretation o the ritual, was a ormalized part o


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Introduction 5

the ceremony much earlier on that side o the Channel than in England.23Suchdivergences, however, have not been closely examined in the largely Continentalscholarship on spectacular justice.

Te most explored element o English exceptionalism has been the last dyingspeech which emerged in the sixteenth century. Tese speeches have preoccupiedEnglish historians who have not given much attention to the rest o the ritual,and have, thus, engaged in very little exploration o the late medieval origins otheatrical justice.24 And more interested in the end rather than the beginningo the ormalized public execution, the major monographs on capital punish-ment in England have been primarily concerned with the eighteenth century. 25As a result English historians have largely lef the analysis o the early ritualto their Continental counterparts. Outside o my earlier work on reading theexecution ritual in late medieval England, only Danielle Westerho has exploredthe English ritual prior to the sixteenth century.26Although she examines thedismemberment o traitors, her book is primarily about aristocratic identity andends in the mid-ourteenth century.27Tereore, the early history o spectacular

justice in England has not drawn much attention in contrast to the much richerscholarship on the Continental ritual.

Although there are problems inherent to the application o work on the Con-tinental ritual to England, including the act that the English ritual was inuencedby the particular politics o the archipelago, spectacular justice on both sides othe Channel was inuenced by cultural currents that were European wide. For

that reason much o the scholarship on capital punishment has been used by his-torians to open up a larger text on violence and power; making the historiographyo this subject the stepchild o a variety o social theories.28Whether its NorbertEliass civilizing process, Marxs class struggle, Jeremy Benthams utilitarianism orEmile Durkheims collective conscience, social theory offers a holistic approachto the explanation o social lie which can easily incorporate the interpretation o

penal practice.29Inuenced by Norbert Elias, Richard Evans and Petrus Spieren-burg argue that the judicial spectacles in early modern Europe were the producto a relatively weak state that used visible and violent acts o repression in a culturecomortable with cruelty. Te more utilitarian perspective is taken by Richard vanDlem who sees theatrical justice as the demonstration o raw power by a stateintent on deterring criminal behaviour. Esther Cohen, Danielle Westerho and

Paul Friedland describe a ritual based on a set o shared perceptions and popularsymbols. As always, Foucault charted his own course, although one that was also

wedded to the story o the rise o the modern state. For Foucault, this was allsimply a matter o penal style the time or torture beore the economy o pun-ishment was redirected rom the body to the mind.

Fascinated with the role o the body in this process, Foucault has cast a longshadow over more than just the history o capital punishment. His work on the


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body set the stage or an outpouring o scholarship on the body over the lastthree decades.30Te body emblazoned, embarrassed, dissected, standing on thestage or the scaffold the body as a cultural construct and representational devicehas been explored within the context o a variety o topics. Ofen that body hasbeen portrayed as an object to be controlled, manipulated, managed or read butit is not requently presented as an active agent.31Foucault led the way toward thisconception o the objectied body with his descriptions o the body as passivelymutilated by the early modern state and then conned and controlled by institu-tions o discipline beginning in the eighteenth century. He not only nds thisobjectied body on the scaffold, in the prison and the school, but also in eight-eenth-century medical discourse.32His inuence has been signicant, and so themodern body has ofen been read as a postmodern and Foucauldian construct: a

passive agent which is invaded by modern medicine, manipulated by social orcesand controlled by the state.33Perhaps because this concept o the body is so amil-iar to modern historians, the objectied body has been given centre stage in mucho the scholarship on capital punishment in pre-modern Europe.

So the body on the scaffold, dismembered, burned or beheaded, is presentedas the silent object o the power o the state. Only occasionally do we hear thescreams o Damiens, or in much o this scholarship the man on the scaffoldis denied agency.34Tereore, the condemned mans body has been assigned asingle role as the object o a specic technology o power. As such it stands in orgreater orces: the power o the state or the brutality o society. Tis construct o

the objectied body has been the oundation o a history o capital punishmentthat has drawn a stark line between the pre-modern and modern world, makingthe mutilated body o the condemned a symbol o what made medieval man theother a blazon o medieval alterity.

Tis has brought the body o the man on the scaffold into the debate overwhether medieval society was monstrously other or has simply been miscast bya modern society that wants to envision itsel as more civilized while it hones its

weapons o mass destruction and leaves beheaded bodies on the street.35Tisdebate, although interdisciplinary, has primarily taken place within the elds oliterature and art and has largely concentrated on violence in the torture cham-ber and on the stage.36In these settings violences power rests in the theatricalityo its excess.37But perhaps not all violence is the same and maybe it is not always

read in the same way in every situation. Te English Execution Narrative asksthe question: what i the violence on the scaffold was not considered excessive does it then lose its power?

Te rst hint that this may have been the case comes rom the narrativesthat describe the late medieval executions, or they offer a window into howthese events were read by contemporaries. Te political songs and chroniclesthat reported these events in late medieval England reveal that contemporar-


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Introduction 7

ies did not view the violence on the scaffold in quite the same way as modernhistorians.38However, that is not all these narratives tell us. Equally important,

when one reads these accounts across several centuries it becomes clear that therewas a transormation in the message o the ritual. Although the ceremony itselretained much o its thirteenth-century character, its interpretation shifed withthe sands o political and religious change across the centuries. For example, thelate medieval ritual was described by contemporaries as a ceremony that sym-bolized the severance o the condemned rom the community. By the sixteenthcentury that was no longer true. Te narratives that describe the early modernexecutions present the condemned as redeemed through his repentance on thescaffold and, thus, reintegrated into the community in his nal moment. Tere-ore, the sixteenth century ushered in the Golden Age o the Good Death on theScaffold in the execution narrative, marking an important shif in the mentalito punishment. Te concept o reormative justice, so amiliar to the modern

world, began to challenge the retributivist discourse o the scaffold in udorEngland. So when read across several centuries these texts tell a story much largerthan what happened to the man standing beore the executioner.

O course, they can offer only a limited view o how contemporaries thoughtabout these events, or they only tell us what interested the narrators, which,importantly, changed with time and then later genre. Te late medieval authors

were primarily concerned with the high-prole executions o traitors and leaderso popular rebellions, and not the thie at York or the inanticide in Bristol. In the

sixteenth century the martyrologies brought heretics into the discourse o the sca-old and then later in the century the emergence o the pamphlet urther expandedthe genres in which these accounts appeared as well as the types o criminalsdescribed.39As a result there was a democratization o the discourse o the scaffoldin early modern England which brought the voice o the common criminal intothis story and that voice has drawn the interest o early modern historians.

Although little has been written about the execution narratives o late medi-eval England, the literature o the scaffold has been extensively examined orthe sixteenth through to the eighteenth centuries. Tereore, this work does notintend to cover ground already well ploughed but rather to explore aspects o thediscourse o the scaffold which have not been previously examined. 40For exam-

ple, Peter Lake, Michael Questier, Alexandra Walsham and Andrea McKenzie

have explored issues o gender, social anxiety, inversion and providentialismin regard to these narratives, so although Te English Execution Narrativewilltouch tangentially on these topics, they will not be covered in detail.41It will,instead, look at the execution narrative in the longue dureand identiy shifsin narrative structure that have not been examined in other works.42Tis workis not intended to be a comprehensive study o the literature o the scaffold but


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rather a targeted examination o select rhetorical strategies that will be used as awindow into how contemporaries thought about these events.43

O course, a thirteenth-century monk writing a chronicle in a monasterynear the border with Scotland, a sixteenth-century Protestant martyrologist, theOrdinary o Newgate in the seventeenth century or the anonymous author o a

pamphlet written about the execution o a thie in Restoration England would beexpected to describe an execution in very different ways. Tis analysis does revealthat certain tropes did dominate at specic times. And that dominance was morethan just the borrowing that characterized the medieval chronicle, or at specictimes there were common tropes that emerged in multiple genres.44For example,a political song about the execution o Simon Fraser described this event in muchthe same way as the account o the execution o William Wallace in Te Chroni-cle of Lanercost.45And executions in sixteenth-century England were described byHenry Machyn in his diary in ways quite similar to how John Stowe reported themin his chronicle.46Similarly, in his martyrology John Foxe repeated tropes ound inthe Chronicle of Queen Jane.47So the story o an execution was told in much thesame way by contemporaries writing in a variety o genres. However, tropes didchange with time. Te English Execution Narrativeidenties important points odeparture as authors working in a variety o genres turned to new rhetorical strate-gies at critical points in the history o the execution narrative. For example, HenryKnighton described executions in a chronicle written in the ourteenth century ina very different way rom the author o the sixteenth-century Chronicle of Queen

Jane.48

Tereore, this book will argue that select political crises, as well as largercultural currents, led to shifs in how these events were described.Tis makes the changing political landscape o late medieval and early mod-

ern England part o this story. A lot happened between the thirteenth andseventeenth centuries, much o which is beyond the scope o this project: the riseo Parliament, multiple depositions and civil wars, changes in the law o treason,the birth o impeachment and attainder, the takeover o the English Church, the

very public execution o a king and, nally, the restoration o the monarchy. Tispolitical history creates a problem when it comes to the terminology used todescribe authority in this work. Te term state will be employed requently butit will be used with necessary qualication, or there can be no one denition ostate or a story that begins in the reign o Henry III and ends with William and

Mary. So by necessity, state will be used loosely to reer to the governing entitythat is exercising what is recognized at the time, albeit not always universally, aslegitimate authority. Sometimes it will be employed in reerence to the person othe monarch and at other times to a government that is unctioning separatelyrom the king. Tereore, state will be used broadly and in an admittedly impre-cise manner to reer to the recognized legal authority o the moment.


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Introduction 9

Although this work touches tangentially on many topics, such as the chang-ing nature o English politics, in essence TeEnglish Execution Narrative is ahistory o the execution narrative. It begins this story in the thirteenth century

with the advent o descriptions o the public and theatrical dismemberment otraitors. Te rst chapter examines the history o the descriptions o the dismem-bered body in space. In England the earliest descriptions o the dismembermento traitors date rom the thirteenth century and this chapter demonstrates thatthis spectacular justice was just one o several practices in late medieval societythat divided the bodies o the elite. Exploring how contemporaries described the

placement o severed limbs and heads, it will argue that in England the ormal-ized public dismemberment o a man on the scaffold was not initiated in orderto deal with the problem o domestic disorder. Ritualized dismemberment wasat rst an adaptive response by the Crown to the challenges o the rst Englishempire and so spectacular justice was born in the crucible o war with Scotlandand Wales. Because the role o imperial politics in the advent o this ritual hasnot been previously explored, this chapter challenges the traditional assumptionthat these events began as part o the states effort to establish a domestic monop-oly o violence. Instead, it argues that these practices were the response o thecrown to the ailure o traditional eudal accommodations to resolve conicts inthe ace o the expansion o English legal authority within the empire.

Trough its examination o the descriptions o the geographic distribution osevered body parts this chapter demonstrates how this ritual unctioned within

the political economy o the rst English empire. Following the descriptions ojudicial dismemberment in late medieval England over the course o several cen-turies, it points out that this orm o punishment was not consistently employedor a variety o reasons, was not used exclusively by the king, but sometimes byhis enemies, and that judicial violence in England was never the states pearl inthe crown o repression, as argued by Petrus Spierenburg.49Instead, it was ofen asign o weakness and was sometimes described in ways that maniest that reality.Te central argument o this rst chapter is that the dismemberment o traitors

was a contingent event that needs to be read within the context o the politicalexigencies that occasioned its use.

Exploring the reasons or the absence o blood in the late medieval executionnarrative, the second chapter examines the punitive aesthetics o the late medi-

eval execution ritual and the signicance o the violence directed at the body othe condemned. Engaging the scholarship on the role o blood as a rhetoricaldevice, this chapter explores the reasons why bleeding, which became increas-ingly central to the narrative o the Passion, was entirely absent rom the latemedieval execution narrative.50Tis is despite the act that as the scholarshipon the iconography and literature o the Passion has demonstrated, many o the

physical aspects o the late medieval execution ritual ound their way into the art


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and literature o the Passion.51Tis chapter argues that the silence about blood iswhat separated the descriptions o the execution o a late medieval traitor romthat o Christ and contends that this distinction had important implications.

Te absence o blood in the execution narrative has been largely overlookedin the extensive scholarship on the cultural history o blood in medieval Europe.Chapter 2 demonstrates why bloods association with affectivity and excess,

which was so central to its use as a rhetorical device in the Passion literature, wasproblematic or the execution narrative. It argues that bloods absence in theseaccounts is signicant to understanding the message o the ritual in its earliestiteration. Challenging traditional assumptions about the interpretation o theseevents, the central argument o this chapter is that the silence about blood is evi-dence that the violence o these events was not considered exceptional and wasnot the primary message o the ritual.

Instead o ocusing on the bleeding and suffering o the condemned, theauthors o the late medieval execution narratives drew direct attention to hiscrimes. Tey were inscribed upon his body in order to advertise the reasons

why the state had chosen to punish this particular man. Tis chapter arguesthat the ocus o the early ritual was the dehumanization o the condemned andhis removal rom the civic, as well as the Christian community. Although thetraditional assumption has been that these events were designed to intimidatethrough brutality, this chapter points out that when authors sympathetic to thecondemned described an execution, they did not criticize the cruelty o the state

nor portray it as excessive, but rather attacked the decision to punish this partic-ular man. At a time when contemporaries ofen complained about the arbitrarynature o royal justice, the reasons or the execution were o more concern thanthe manner. Tereore, this chapter demonstrates that it was not the violence otheatrical justice that was considered exceptional, because in late medieval soci-ety it was not, but rather it was the crimes o the condemned and, occasionally,the verdict o the state that were cast as extraordinary.

In most o the late medieval English execution narratives the condemnedwere not regularly described as penitent. Importantly, a man expressing sorrowor his sins rom the scaffold did not appear in the English narratives until the six-teenth century. Chapter 3 traces the history o theamende honorablein Englandand shows that it was not part o the original ritual and did not become a ormal-

ized part o the English ceremony until the advent o the last dying speech in thesixteenth century. Although these speeches were in part a response to a specicset o political circumstances, they were also the product o larger cultural orcesthat included a undamental shif in attitudes toward what constituted the timeo physical death. Tereore, the ocus o the third chapter is an examination ochanging attitudes toward death and their impact on the execution narrative.


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Introduction 11

What had been thought o throughout most o the Middle Ages as a year-longprocess that began with the procession to the scaffold and ended when the last bodypart had nally decayed became an event in the sixteenth century that happenedin a single moment on the scaffold. Tat transormation, which was undamentalto changes in the message o the execution ritual, required a reconceptualizationo the relationship between death and time. Tis chapter explores how attitudestoward what constituted the time o death were rooted in classical philosophy,Christian theology, popular culture and humoral medicine and that these concep-tual resources were reordered between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuryin ways that inuenced how the death o the condemned was described. It alsoexamines how developments in late medieval theology and religious devotion, theadvent o the practice o embalming, and the desire to divide the corpse afer deathor distribution to various religious houses, as well as the reordering o time thatcame with the advent o the mechanical clock inuenced ideas about what hap-

pens to the body afer death. Tese, in turn, shifed attitudes toward the deatho the condemned. Tese changes helped make the nal moment beore death aseminal event, setting the stage in the sixteenth century or the emergence o theGolden Age o the Good Death on the Scaffold. Tereore, Chapter 3 sets up theremaining chapters o the book, which explore the rise and all o the inuence othears moriendion the message o the ritual in the execution narrative.

Once stripped as a maniestation o their inamy, by the sixteenth century thepolitical elite in England not only died well, but well dressed, which is the ocus

o Chapter 4. Originally described as a passive gure in a ceremony intended tomaniest the loss o status, the Golden Age o the Good Death on the Scaffoldmeant the condemned were no longer cast out o society, but instead were bornagain in death. Tey may still have been dismembered, but they were no longerdehumanized in the descriptions o these events, or their new role was to serve asan example o the power o reormation. Tis chapter argues that the descriptionso dress in the sixteenth-century narratives represented a undamental shif in themessage o the ritual as it moved past its late medieval origins. In these accountsthe condemned were allowed to rehabilitate their reputation and maintain theirhonour i they managed their nal perormance well. Tis shif took place becausethe udor monarchs promoted an exemplary strategy in which the condemned

were allowed to control the moment o their death in exchange or a statement

o submission to the state. Tereore, the sixteenth-century execution narrativesshifed their ocus rom the crime to the behaviour o the condemned in their nalmoments. Did the man on the scaffold die well as a sinner saved or badly as anunrepentant reprobate who reused to nd his way back to God? Tis questionmade the nal moment beore death a dramatic moment o truth and one in whichthe body played a new and important role, or it was now read to assess the cred-ibility o last-minute repentance. However, this chapter points out that this udor


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accommodation, which acilitated a changing role or the body in the executionnarrative, opened Pandoras box, or it created a space in which the condemnedcould construct his own identity and craf his own message on the scaffold.

Te last dying speech was central to the udor states exemplary strategy.Tese speeches have been well explored by historians who have argued that they

were a maniestation o the ideological control exercised in udor England.52While much o the previous scholarship has ocused on the speech itsel, theother parts o the sixteenth-century execution narrative have largely gone unex-amined. As a result these speeches have ofen been read out o context. Littlenoticed has been the act that they rst appeared in accounts written by Prot-estant authors sympathetic to the condemned. Te authors that reported thesespeeches also described the clothing, gestures and demeanour o the man on thescaffold and did so in ways that subverted the message o the state. Tus, thischapter argues that the descriptions o the last dying speech were part o a largerrhetorical strategy that was employed by sympathetic authors to craf their owninterpretation o these events.

In so doing these authors used the body o the condemned in ways not seen inthe late medieval execution narratives. In the sixteenth century, the body was usedin the execution narrative to shape a message that challenged that o the state.Tis chapter demonstrates that like a player on the stage, the condemned usedapparel to ashion an identity on the scaffold and shape a message that was arremoved rom that o the original thirteenth-century ritual. Tereore, the bod-

ies o the condemned were sometimes described in the sixteenth-century texts asagents and, importantly, not always as the object o the power o the state.Although there is a rich scholarship on the subject o dress in Renaissance

England, the descriptions o the clothing o the condemned have drawn lit-tle attention. Tis chapter is the rst to look closely at how dress was used ina variety o ways to inuence the message o an execution.53 It could conrmconessional identity, make a personalized sartorial statement or simply send amessage that reaffi rmed the social status o the condemned. Tereore, Chapter4 argues that there was never one reading o these events. Troughout the six-teenth century there emerged in chronicles, diaries, personal correspondence,martyrologies and, later, pamphlets a multivalent discourse o the scaffold that

was sometimes supportive and at other times subversive o the interests o the

state. Tereore, this chapter challenges the traditional interpretation o the lastdying speech as simply a reection o an internal sanction o obedience to theearly modern state.54

Te nal chapter o this work argues that the Golden Age o the Good Deathon the Scaffold would prove short-lived. Examining the increasing deance inthe last dying speeches o the seventeenth century, it argues that over time thereligious and political conicts o early modern England so undermined the


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Introduction 13

credibility o the man standing on the scaffold that the Golden Age o the GoodDeath on the Scaffold was slowly ushered off the stage. It traces how the execu-tion narratives moved rom the subtle subversion o the sixteenth-century texts toa more open deance in the seventeenth century. Te end result was that the valueo the public execution to serve as an exemplary strategy was called into question.

Tis chapter points out that a more orthright deance in the seventeenthcentury and the willingness to report it were maniestations o the beginningo the end o the Golden Age o the Good Death on the Scaffold. Tis change

would have important implications or the condence in the public executionto serve as an exemplary strategy.55 Te central argument o Chapter 5 is thatconessional conict in early modern England set the stage or challenges on thescaffold that eventually extended beyond religious persecutions. Tis happenedat the very moment an explosion in the marketplace o print offered opportuni-ties or the broad dissemination o multiple interpretations o these events. Teseevents, coupled with larger cultural currents that inuenced attitudes toward the

ars moreindi, as well as changing attitudes toward death, in turn challenged thecredibility o last-minute repentance. How the execution narratives adapted tothese shifs in sentiment are explored as this chapter examines the response tothe increasing cacophony o voices rom the scaffold.

It demonstrates that in the second hal o the seventeenth century the narra-tives shifed their ocus rom the actual execution back in time to tell the storyo the condemned mans journey to crime and condemnation. And as the seven-

teenth century progressed the behaviour o the man on the scaffold was describedwith decreasing requency and in some accounts it was not mentioned at all. Tetiming o the last dying speech also shifed. Tis chapter points out that thesespeeches moved rom statements made on the scaffold to texts that were ofen

written, printed and distributed beore the condemned even lef the prison.Importantly, these shifs in narrative structure have largely gone unexamined inthe previous scholarship on the early modern English execution narrative.56

Tis nal chapter also points out that an erosion in the aith o a public exe-cution to serve as an exemplary strategy began to be articulated in texts writtenin the second hal o the seventeenth century. Te men and women who notonly reused to die well but ofen scoffed at the solemn nature o these eventsreected the degree to which changing attitudes toward death and repentance

had undermined the message o the ritual.57

It argues that once the nal momenton the scaffold was stripped o its signicance, there was no longer any reason orthe crowd to view the body on the scaffold. Tus, this story ends with a review othe changes to the ritual that slowly removed the body o the condemned rom

view in the eighteenth century. While most historians have credited the end othe public execution to the civilizing process, a more secure state or governmentconcerns about the disorder at these events, this chapter argues that by the eight-


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eenth century what was essentially a late medieval ritual had become increasinglysenescent, or it had long outlived the conceptual resources that gave it birth.58

At its heart, this is the story o the journey o the execution narrative asit moved through tropes, travelled through genres, and crossed conessionalboundaries, as well as class. Critical to this history are the ways in which nar-rators writing in a variety o genres shared a common rhetorical ramework.Importantly, that ramework changed with time as authors adapted rhetoricalstrategies to negotiate a series o crises as well as respond to cultural change.

Tereore, Te English Execution Narrative tells or the rst time the history othe execution narrative over the course o ve centuries and in so doing offers severalrevisionist readings o the history o capital punishment in pre-modern England. Itrevisits the origins o spectacular justice in a way that challenges the Whig narrativeo the history o capital punishment, reinterprets the signicance o the violenceo these events, challenges traditional assumptions about the last dying speech inearly modern England and offers an alternative explanation or the end o the publicexecution. Tereore, it is about more than just the history o the descriptions odismembered bodies on the scaffold. Using the narratives o these events, this bookreads the execution ritual in ways that challenge many o the traditional assump-tions about exemplary justice in late medieval and early modern England.

Documents

Introduction to The English Execution Narrative, 1200-1700.pdf