Hanged, drawn and quartered: Robin Bush on the last of the White Friars

When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, only about 15 monks protested out of the 10,000 involved; they met a gory end. They obviously had to be made examples of.

Friar John Stone, the head of the White Friars, for instance, had said: 'If I die for it, the king may not be head of the church of England but must be a spiritual father appointed by God.' Henry VIII wasn't going to stand for that. It counted as treason, so Stone had to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

We still have the city chamberlain's account, which gives all the details of what the gruesome punishment cost:

'Paid for half a ton of timber to make a pair of gallouses [gallows] to hang Friar Stone, for a carpenter for making the same and the dray to drag them, a labourer who digged the holes, four men who helped set up the gallouses and for drink to them, for carriage of timber from Stable Gate to the donjon, to two men that set the kettle, a great cauldron, and parboiled him, to two men that carried his quarters to the gate and set them up, for a halter to hang him, for two ha'penny halters, for straw, to the woman that scoured the kettle afterwards and to him that did execution, four shillings and eight pence.'

The whole gory process took a long time. To hang a man, cut him down while still living; to slit open his stomach and bring his entrails out in front of him and then burn them; and then finally to hack him into quarters, took approximately half an hour. It was plenty of entertainment for the ghouls who gathered to watch.