Let's say you're the king of England in the 13th century. You enjoy absolute power and authority, but only if you can keep your grip on the throne, and there are all kinds of plotting pretenders and rebellious radicals keen on topping your reign and seeing you dead.
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So, what can you do to scare them off? You can't post a bunch of threatening Tweets (heck, the printing press is still a few centuries away). But maybe, just maybe, you can devise a form of punishment so twisted and sadistic that only a lunatic would even entertain the thought of committing high treason.
That's how historians believe medieval monarchs came up with the wildly violent execution method known as hanging, drawing and quartering. If you've seen the film "Braveheart," then you've had a (nauseating) taste of just how torturous and cruel the practice was. The Scottish rebel William Wallace was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1305 (accused of being a traitor to King Edward I) and in the film we see him disemboweled — his abdomen cut open and his intestines removed — while still very much alive. And that was only one part of the order!
From the 13th century all the way until the 19th century, hundreds of Englishmen convicted of high treason were sentenced to die by this very public and grisly display of absolute power, including rebels like Wallace, political terrorists like Guy Fawkes and Catholic martyrs who refused to recognize the authority of the Church of England.
Richard Clark is the creator of the excellent history website Capital Punishment U.K. and the author of "Capital Punishment in Britain." He says that hanging, drawing and quartering was the "ultimate" punishment, but that the name creates some confusion.
Here's the actual text of the English law (on the books until 1870) outlining the death sentence for anyone convicted of high treason:
"That you be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution where you shall be hanged by the neck and being alive cut down, your private members shall be cut off and your bowels taken out and burned before you, your head severed from your body and your body divided into four quarters to be disposed of at the King's pleasure."
The "drawing" part actually comes first, and it involves the convict being tied to a type of sled that's "drawn" or dragged behind a horse all the way from the prison to the gallows. For many centuries, that journey was a full 3 miles from Newgate Prison in London to Tyburn, a remote locale outside of the city whose name became inextricably linked with public executions.
"It was probably a good three-hour drag," says Clark, and the streets would have been packed with riotous crowds jeering and throwing garbage at the poor sap as he prepared to meet his maker in the worst manner possible.