23 AUGUST
SCOTTISH REBEL WILLIAM WALLACE STRANGLED, CASTRATED AND DISEMBOWLED.
On this day in 1305, William Wallace, the legendary Scottish rebel, was found guilty of refusing to recognise English rule. He was drawn behind horses for five miles, then strangled, castrated, disembowled while still, although barely, alive before being finally beheaded and quartered.
His severed head was then ” affixed upon London bridge in the sight of those crossing both by land and by water,” while one quarter of his body “was hung on the gibbet at Newscastle upon Tyne, another quarter at Berwick, a third quarter at Stirling and a fourth quarter at St. John’s Town (Perth) as a cause of fear and chastisement of all going past and looking upon these things.”[1]
FOOTNOTES
- Quotations from an eighteenth century transcript of a medieval manuscript accessed at “Wallace’s Execution,” The Society of William Wallace, found online at http://www.thesocietyofwilliamwallace.com/wallacesexecution.htm