What does "drawn" mean in "Hung, drawn and quartered"?
I'd always blithely assumed drawn here meant 'pulled' - as used in the context of wire-making, where malleable metal is 'drawn' through the die/plate/orifice to elongate into lengths of wire.Probably this understanding came to me from drawings of four horses drawing/quartering the victim.This still makes better sense to me of the sequence- with drawn preceding quartered, and there is some debate about the exact meaning. But looking it up now on more than one website, it would seem that it is, by and large, accepted that the word 'drawn' is being used here in the more familiar sense of being 'drawn' / carried along by horse/s - to the scene of the execution. IMHO, Dragged would have been a better choice for such a wretched context!
It seems illogical on the face of it, but the word hung can come first in the sequence, when you consider that the condemned was not hanged 'till dead', but lowered to the ground in a half-dead/semi-conscious stage.
In the denouement, his limbs were fastened to four horses that were whipped hard to send them scampering at different angles, to effectively 'quarter' the subject, aided by some strikes of the executioners' swords to help sever the limbs. It seems disembowelment was an optional extra- carried out either at the discretion of the executioners, or by specific imperial diktat.
'Drawn and quartered', is not always preceded by hung, AFAIK. Maybe the verdict depended on the severity of the crime / wrath of the king. It seems plausible that a traitor could either be just drawn and quartered, or, to really make a spectacle out of it, first hanged, then 'drawn' and quartered. And sometimes eviscerated as well.These were usually public executions, witnessed by scores of onlookers. For those who couldn't make it to the show, the severed limbs were left dangling at the venue. Sometimes the heart and limbs of the condemned were taken out in a procession and displayed to the public.
Some links: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1049/what-do-drawn-and-quartered-and-keelhauling-mean
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/hanged-drawn-and-quartered.html
http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/hung-drawn-and-quartered.htm
This one has a somewhat graphic description:
http://www.strum.co.uk/twilight/hdq.htm
Despite the victims being drawn to the place of execution on a hurdle, "drawn" in that phrase definitely did mean disembowelled.
This penalty was applied only to men. Women were burned at the stake for treason, or beheaded if they were high on the social scale. (Although women were rarely involved in political plots, treason included other crimes such as forging gold coins in which women were implicated if they were caught in possession of all too aptly named die stamps used for this purpose!)
Although it is gruesome to relate, the preliminary hanging part was merely to provoke an erection. The executioner would remove the victim's trousers and castrate them while they were hanging, as this would give him more to firmly grasp and hold aloft for the baying crowd to better see!
When butchers clean poultry, chickens etc. it's known as drawing the bird. So "hung, drawn and quartered" is:
- Hung.
- Drawn like poultry.
- Quartered.