As Bad Deaths Go, It's Hard to Top This

By Tony Long

Oct. 3, 1283: Dafydd ap Gruffydd, the last native prince of Wales in a free if turbulent Wales, becomes the first person known to be executed by being hanged, then drawn and quartered.

While the human capacity for cruelty is limitless, it's hard to top the medievals for their sheer inventiveness when it came to executing a criminal -- especially for the crime of high treason.

Captured after attacking Hawarden Castle at Easter during the ultimately unsuccessful Welsh struggle to remain independent of Plantagenet England, Dafydd was imprisoned by an outraged King Edward I, the man given credit for dreaming up Dafydd's grisly fate. The death warrant stipulated Dafydd's demise should be slow and agonizing, and the monarch did not disappoint.

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