Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-lrf7s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-30T07:05:14.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A traitor's death? The identity of a drawn, hanged and quartered man from Hulton Abbey, Staffordshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Mary E. Lewis
Mary E. Lewis*
Affiliation:
*Department of Archaeology, School of Human and Environmental Studies, University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire RG6 6AB, UK (Email: m.e.lewis@reading.ac.uk)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Analysis of a set of bones redeposited in a medieval abbey graveyard showed that the individual had been beheaded and chopped up, and this in turn suggested one of England's more gruesome execution practices. Since quartering was generally reserved for the infamous, the author attempts to track down the victim and proposes him to be Hugh Despenser, the lover of King Edward II.

Keywords

Hulton Abbeyexecutionquarteringperimortem traumaHugh Despenser the YoungerEdward II
Type
Research article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 82 , Issue 315 , March 2008 , pp. 113 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barron, W. 1981. The penalties for treason in medieval life and literature. Journal of Medieval History 7: 187–202.Google Scholar
Bellamy, J. 1970. The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bellamy, J. 1979. The Tudor Law of Treason: an introduction. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Brigstocke Sheppard, J.Rolls Series, 1889, iii: 404–12.Google Scholar
Brown, E. 1981. Death and the human body in the later middle ages: the legislation of Boniface VIII on the division of the corpse. Viator 12: 211–7.Google Scholar
Browne, S. 2004. The human remains, in Klemperer, W. & Boothroyd, N. (ed.) Excavations at Hulton Abbey, Staffordshire 1987–1994 (Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 21): 115–26. Leeds: Maney.Google Scholar
Bynum, C. 1995. The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Cockayne, G. 1919. Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant Vols I & VI. London: St Catherine Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, E. 1989. Symbols of culpability and the universal language of justice: the ritual of public executions in later medieval Europe. History of European Ideas 11: 407–16.Google Scholar
Finucane, R. 1981. Sacred corpse, profane carrion: social ideals and death rituals in the later Middle Ages, in Whaley, J. (ed.) Mirrors of Mortality. Studies in the Social History of Death: 40–60. London: Europa.Google Scholar
Fryde, N. 1979. The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321–1326. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hedges, R., Housley, C., Bronk, C. Ramsey & Van Klinken, G.. 1991. Radiocarbon dates from the Oxford AMS system. Archaeometry Datelist 13: 285–6.Google Scholar
Holmes, G. 1955. A protest against the Despensers, 1326. Speculum 30: 207–12.Google Scholar
Johnes, T. 1808. Froissart's Chronicles of England, France, Spain and the Adjoining Countries. London: printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme … & J. White.Google Scholar
Klemperer, W. & Boothroyd, N. (ed.). 2004. Excavations at Hulton Abbey, Staffordshire 1987–1994. Leeds: Maney.Google Scholar
Marfart, B., Pelletier, J.-P. & Fixot, M.. 2004. Post-mortem ablation of the heart: a medieval funerary practice. A case observed at the cemetery of Ganagobie Priory in the French Department of Alpes de Haute-Provence. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 14: 67–73.Google Scholar
Maxwell, H. 1913. Chronicle of Lanercost 1272–1336. Glasgow: J. Maclehose & Sons.Google Scholar
Park, K. 1995. The life of the corpse: division and dissection in late medieval Europe. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50: 111–32.Google Scholar
Phillips, S. 2000. Simon de Montfort (1265), the Earl of Manchester (1644), and other stories: violence and politics in thirteenth and early fourteenth-century England, in Kaueper, R.W. (ed.) Violence in Medieval Society: 79–90. Woodbridge: Boydell.Google Scholar
Pollock, F. & Maitland, F.. 1968. The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Royer, K. 2003. The body in parts: reading the execution ritual in late medieval England. Historical Reflections 29: 319–39.Google Scholar
Tomkinson, J. 1997. A History of Hulton Abbey. Stoke-on-Trent: City Museum and Art Gallery.Google Scholar
Valente, C. 1998. The deposition and abdication of Edward I. English Historical Review 113: 852–81.Google Scholar
Viard, J. & Deprez, E. (ed.). 1904–1905. Chronique de Jean Le Bel. Paris: Société de l'Histoire de France.Google Scholar
Wise, P. 1985. Hulton Abbey: a century of excavations. Stoke-on-Trent: City Museum & Art Gallery.Google Scholar
Wrottesley, G. 1887. Military services performed by Staffordshire tenants in the 13th and 14th centuries. Collections for the History of Staffordshire 8: 1–124.Google Scholar