o mitigate the sufferings of felons at the stake, the
executioner usually fastened one end of a cord to the stake, and
bringing this cord around the neck of the woman, pulled it tightly the
moment the torch was applied, and continued the strain until life was
extinct, which, unless the cord was sooner burnt asunder, generally
happened before the condemned had suffered much from the intensity of
the flames.

[Footnote 8: By stat. 22 Hen. VIII. ch. 9, a person of either sex, who
was convicted of murdering another by poison, was to be boiled to
death, and the offence was, by the same act, declared high treason;
but this act was repealed by 1 Edw. VI. ch. 12, after several
executions under it, including that of Margaret Davy, who poisoned her
mistress. Though by the common law poisoning was deemed a most
atrocious circumstance, it did not alter the punishment of the
principal crime involved. The law considered only the crime, and not
the manner in which it was committed.]

In cases of high treason, other barbarities were practised upon the
bodies of the criminals, but these were frequently, and in cases of
persons of distinction, generally, remitted. Indeed, even the hanging
was dispensed with in these latter cases; and hence we read of the
execution of great prisoners of state, male and female, by beheading,
which, strictly, is a manner of death unknown to the laws of England,
except as an incident to the principal penalty by hanging or burning.
After the hanging, the body, according to rule, was to be cut down (if
possible, while yet alive) to be eviscerated, then beheaded, and the
trunk and limbs divided into four parts, to be disposed of as the
sovereign should order. By special writ, under the privy seal, all
these circumstances, except decapitation, were, as I have already
said, usually omitted.

All male persons convicted whether of high treason or of petit treason
were, unless specially exempted in the manner I have stated, _drawn_
to the place of execution. This was originally an ignominious incident
of the terrible penalty, and required that the criminal should be
rudely pulled along over the ground, behind a horse; later, however, a
hurdle or wicker frame, or a sledge,--that is, as we call it, a
sled,--was used, either from motives of humanity, or in order to
prolong the life of the traitor through subsequent stages of the
punishment. According to Sir Matthew Hale, women were not to be drawn,
in cases of peti