Treachery

The first act dealing with treason was passed in what became the United Kingdom in 1351, and until 1814,  when it was reduced to a straighfoward hanging offence, the punishment was:

“[To] be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution and there be hanged by the neck, but not until they are dead, but that they should be taken down again, and that when they are yet alive their bowels should be taken out and burnt before their faces, and that afterwards their heads should be severed from their bodies, and their bodies be divided into four quarters, and their heads and quarters to be at the King’s disposal.”

Although no-one has been executed in the United Kingdom for any crime since  1964, when Peter Anthony Allen, at Walton Prison in Liverpool, and Gwynne Owen Evans, at Strangeways Prison in Manchester were executed for the murder of John Alan West, it took until 1998 and the Crime and Disorder Act to get the punishment further downgraded to life imprisonment.