Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty (11 page)

At the stake he stood on a high stool, and an iron hoop was brought to secure him about the waist but, it being too short, he had to press his stomach in with his hand so that the guard could attach it to the stake. He refused the hoops for his neck and ankles, saying: ‘I am well assured I shall not trouble you.’ As a merciful gesture, three bladders, each containing a pound of gunpowder, were brought; one was tied between his legs, the others beneath each of his armpits. And as an eyewitness described:

‘Command was now given that the fire should be kindled, but because there were not fewer green faggots than two horses could carry, it did not kindle speedily, but was some time before it took the reeds upon the faggots. At length it burnt about him, but the wind, having full strength in that place, it blew the flame from him, so that he was in a manner little more than touched by the fire.

Endeavours were then made to increase the flame, and then the bladders of gunpowder exploded, but did him little good, being so laced, and the wind having such power. In this fire he exclaimed: “Lord Jesus have mercy upon me! Lord Jesus receive my spirit!” And these were the last words he was heard to utter. Yet he struck his breast with his hands, and his hands stuck fast in striking the iron around his chest. So immediately bowing forward, he yielded up his spirit.

He was nearly three-quarters of an hour or more in the fire, as a lamb, patiently bearing the extremity thereof, neither moving forward or backward, but died as quietly as a child in his bed.’

The list of those burned to death is almost endless, corporation accounts across the country revealing such grim expenditure as that recorded in Canterbury in 1533: ‘Paid 14s. 8d., the expense of bringing a heretic from London; and for one and a half loads of wood to burn him, 2s.; for gunpowder, 1d.; and a stake and staple, 8d.; total, 17s. 5d.’ Thomas Bilney, bound to the stake in 1532, was devoured by the flames and, as his body shrivelled, it leaned on its chain until one of the guards struck out the staple with his halbert so that the body fell into the ashes and disintegrated.

Roger Clark, standing on a tar-barrel, was surrounded by green wood that would not burn properly. Choking in the smoke from the smouldering branches and the fiercely turning tar-barrel, he was put out of his misery when one of the bystanders, taking pity on him, struck the iron shackle about his neck ‘and then with blows on the head, forced the poor writhing body into the flames where it was soon consumed’.

Not merely content with burning living men, the authorities went so far as to burn the dead bodies of those suspected of having had alien beliefs. A man named William Tracey left a will, some phrases in which could be construed as having heretical meaning. So by order of Archbishop Cranmer, his corpse was dug up and destroyed by fire.

The last man to be burned alive was Edward Wightman in 1612, during the reign of James I. He actually endured the flames twice, for, when the flames reached him the first time, the heat was so fierce that he recanted, and the onlookers rescued him, some of them being badly scorched in the process. However, once back in prison he changed his mind and refused to renounce formally; so they took him back to the stake, where he paid the full price for his religious convictions.

Although no more were to be executed by fire for heresy, it was not until 1648 that such a penalty for that offence was abolished by law.

Across the border in Scotland the Church had similar powers of draconian punishment. David Stratton, a fisherman, was ordered to pay his tithes, a tenth of his catch, to the priests, but refused, throwing a tenth of his catch back into the river and saying that if they wanted it they would have to get the fish from where he got them. For this he was excommunicated for disrespect, and then burned alive.

And when Forret, the Vicar of Dolor, was tied to the stake, he refused to recant. So they gave him a second chance by burning another victim while he watched. Undaunted, sustained by his faith, he refused to submit; whereupon the abbot directed that the kindling should be ignited, with the inevitable result.

Witches, male and female, were also burned alive. During the reign of Charles II the law stipulated that they ‘were to be worried at the stake and then burnt’, a witch being thus dispatched at Dornoch as late as 1708.

William Coke and Alison Dick, charged with sorcery, suffered in the flames for that crime on 19 November 1633, the expense account revealing:

Nor were councillors and sheriffs the only official witnesses to such an execution. The parish register of Glamis, in Scotland, records: ‘Na preaching here the Lord’s Day, the minister being at Cortachy burning a witch.’

So the inhuman penalty, which started when St Alban died at the stake in
ad
304, took its terrible toll, for while the last heretic was burned in Scotland in 1697, women guilty of petty or high treason continued to suffer in the flames for many more years. As late as 1782 Rebecca Downing was burned alive for poisoning her master, and the last woman to die in that horrifying manner was Christine Murphy, alias Bowman, guilty of counterfeiting money, who perished on 18 March 1789.

But individual burnings such as these were, if you’ll pardon the phrase, small fry compared to the human conflagrations that took place on an unimaginable scale during the Spanish Inquisition. This ‘hunting of the heretics’, persecution and suppression of those who rejected the Roman Catholic religion, was introduced in Spain in 1478, spreading rapidly through France and Italy, Portugal and The Netherlands.

The power of the Inquisitors was absolute. Under the jurisdiction of a Dominican father, Thomas de Torquemada, who became the first Grand Inquisitor, more than 10,000 heretics were burned to death in the space of 17 years; in one year, over 2,000 victims were roasted alive in the Seville district, and in Spain itself no fewer than 32,382 persons were burned alive between the years 1481 and 1808.

Nor was it merely, as in Britain, simply a case of taking the condemned person in a cart to the stake and setting fire to faggots. The whole gamut of religious ceremony had to take place, commencing when a suspected person was denounced to the authorities. A preliminary Inquiry took place, its results being passed to the Holy Office, and when these officers were satisfied that the suspect was indeed guilty – and few were found innocent – he or she was taken to the secret prison of the Office, there to be held incommunicado, completely isolated from the outside world.

Should questioning not produce the required confession, the victim was then subjected to various forms of torture, these including the pendola, a knife-edged pendulum, and the dreaded
tormento de toca
, in which water was poured through a gauze in the mouth. By degrees, the water forced the material into the stomach, the blood-soaked gauze then being slowly pulled out.

Those who confessed forfeited part of their estate to the Church and the State; those who resisted all their tormentors’ efforts eventually lost all their goods and property.

But no matter what the outcome of that ordeal, the flames awaited. Those who, despite the torture, held fervently to their own faith were doomed to be burned alive; those who confessed their willingness to embrace the Catholic religion were also burned, but were granted the concession of first being strangled. The
auto de fe
, the burning, was held on a festival day, vast crowds assembling to watch the awesome procession. It was led by the Dominican friars, after whom came the penitents, each carrying a large wax candle in their hands and wearing a sanbenito, a black, sleeveless coat with flames painted in an inverted fashion.

Next came the negative and relapsed, whose coats bore the painted flames pointing upwards, and also those who professed faiths contrary to the faith of Rome. In addition to the upward-pointing flames, their habits had their portraits emblazoned on their chests, surrounded by open-mouthed serpents, dogs and devils.

To ensure that none of them could appeal to the multitude or protest their innocence, they were prevented from speaking by having had a small iron ring forced over their tongues, the tip then being burned with a hot iron, making speech impossible.

Each prisoner was accompanied by a familiar of the Inquisition, and those to be burned alive had a Jesuit on each side, exhorting the victim to abjure even at this late stage. The rest of the procession consisted of more inquisitors on horseback and mules and, last of all, the Inquisitor General on a white horse, led by two men with black hats and green hatbands.

A scaffold large enough for 2,000-3,000 persons had been erected at the Riberia, the place of execution, and, after a sermon in praise of the Inquisition had been given, the priest then formally handed over the prisoners to the civil authorities, with the hypocritical warning that they should not ‘touch their blood or put their lives in danger’.

Loaded with chains, the doomed were led on to the scaffold, where there were as many stakes waiting as there were victims. The negative and relapsed Catholics were tied to their stakes, strangled, and then burned to death, but the confirmed heretics had to climb up ladders to mount their stakes, and be secured to the seats affixed thereto.

Last-minute pleas by the Jesuits bringing no positive response, they were then sentenced to eternal fire and damnation. At that pronouncement a great shout went up from the vast crowds, as they chanted: ‘Let the dogs’ beards be made!’ Whereupon the familiars took their long poles, at the end of which bunches of furze had been tied and, igniting these, thrust the burning brands into the faces of the heretics, ‘till their faces were burned black and the surrounding populace rent the air with loud exclamations of exultant joy’.

At last the heaped bushes at the bottom of each stake were set on fire, but the seats to which the victims were chained were so high that the flames barely reached them, the heretics being roasted to death rather than burned alive.

The countries subjugated by Spain suffered similarly. On 16 February 1568 the Inquisition condemned
all
the inhabitants of The Netherlands to death as heretics. Although this was physically impossible, there being a population of three million, 800 were burned to death or hanged in the first week. The Spanish King’s representative, the Duke of Alba, boasted that he had ordered 28,000 thousand executions, and many were carried out. Those who did not perish at the stake were tied back to back and thrown in the rivers or, if women, were raped, then killed.