GEN-MEDIEVAL-L Archives

Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2000-07 > 0965045742


From: John Steele Gordon <>
Subject: Re: Fw: Children of Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 12:15:42 GMT


Leo van de Pas wrote:

> Perhaps I am callous but when reading about such executions I read it as
> information. If you visualise the horrendous things inflicted on people, you
> would not want to read any further and, as a result, you might as well give
> up genealogy.
>
> In the Complete Peerage,Volume VIII page 441, they give a description which,
> to me is a bit vague (thank goodness).
>
> "He died 29 November1330, being drawn to execution like a felon and hanged
> at the Elms, Tyburn. His body was left on the gallows two days and two
> nights. He was buried in the Church of the Grey Friars at Shrewsbury."
>
> The question I would ask (but don't answer) is, what do they mean by "being
> drawn to execution". If drawn means what I think it does, there was not much
> left of him to hang.

"Draw" is one of those English words with many, many meanings. It
occupies more than six pages of the OED. In this case "draw" means
"taken." The OED says of this meaning, "The most general word for this;
other words partly synonymous, as drag, haul, trail, tug, imply drawing
in a particular manner or with special force."

The image that comes to mind--quite possibly out of an old Errol Flynn
movie or some such unimpeachable historical source--is of him tied to a
rope and forced to run along behind the cart to which he is tied or be
dragged.

The ignominy of this end--no different than what would have been meted
out to someone caught stealing a sheep--for a proud man who had been
running England a month earlier, must have been painful indeed.

JSG
--
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~jsggenealogy/Jsgordo

This thread: