The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment through History by Mark P Donnelly, Daniel Diehl Page B
Authors: Mark P Donnelly, Daniel Diehl
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elsewhere, they were to be confined, chained, beaten and given only bread and water until they learned their lesson. A second such offence carried a sentence of being branded on the chest with the letter ‘V’, for vagabond or ‘F’ for falsehood. Even giving charity (either food or money) to the poor was outlawed. Additional laws were passed to keep the old social structure securely in place. Sumptuary laws, decreeing that no one could wear clothing of a better quality than befitted their station in life, were passed throughout Europe. Both the quality and colour of cloth a person was allowed to wear were tightly regulated. All of society, at least those lower than the noble classes, was being publicly punished for trying to better themselves. It did not work.
Used for the marking of convicted criminals, usually on the shoulder or shoulder blade but often also on the cheek or forehead (depending on the culture and the crime). His or her crime was specified by a code of letters or symbols which would have been easily recognizable to everyone in the land.
When one plan fails, another is always devised to take its place. In 1381, when both the Statute of Labourers and the sumptuary laws failed to keep the working classes in line, the English Parliament enacted a flat tax of 1 s on everyone over the age of fifteen. Considering the draconian measures that had preceded it and the fact that this was the second such tax in less than a year, it is hardly surprising that the peasants of Kent and Essex Counties rose in revolt. Under the leadership of anex-soldier named Walter (Wat) Tyler and a defrocked priest named John Ball, they ravaged the countryside, overran Rochester Castle, stormed London, burned and murdered their way through town, sacked the Tower of London, killed the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Treasurer and paraded their heads through the streets of the city. In an act of unparalleled bravery, the fourteen-year-old King Richard II met with Tyler and his mob in an attempt to arrange a truce. The boy-king promised that if the mob would go home, the tax would be rescinded, more latitude would be given to the peasants, serfdom would be abolished and no reprisals would take place. Tyler himself was killed when he made an attempt on the King’s life, but the mob of thousands quietly dispersed. Richard undoubtedly meant what he had said, but as a minor, his word was not yet law. The Privy Council forced him to renege on his agreement. Later, addressing the representatives of the peasants, Richard is recorded to have said: ‘serfs and peasants you are and serfs and peasants ye shall remain’. Hardly a statement likely to engender good behaviour among the masses.
Detail of a Dutch engraving of about 1590, one in a series of fifty-three showing the massacre of the protestant citizens of Antwerp by the Spanish on 5 November 1576. Here we see three victims being tortured by suspension. The male is being suspended by his genitalia, the female by her breasts and the man in the background by his wrists. We do not think anything further needs to be said here to convey the agony of the victims which is not otherwise clear in the image.
As enlightened as he had been as a teenager, the harsh realities of politics and life in the Middle Ages eventually made King Richard as hard as his ministers. In 1383, an Irish monk gained an audience with the king and openly accused the Duke of Lancaster of treason. Whether or not Richard looked into the matter is unknown, but his reaction toward the monk’s effrontery was recorded by a court chronicler. ‘Lord Holland and Sir Henry Greene, Knight, came to this friar and, putting a cord about his neck, tied the other end about his privy members and after hanging him up from the ground [by this rope], laid a stone upon his belly, with the weight thereof … he was strangled and tormented, so his very backbone burst asunder herewith, besides the straining of his privy
Used for the marking of convicted criminals, usually on the shoulder or shoulder blade but often also on the cheek or forehead (depending on the culture and the crime). His or her crime was specified by a code of letters or symbols which would have been easily recognizable to everyone in the land.
When one plan fails, another is always devised to take its place. In 1381, when both the Statute of Labourers and the sumptuary laws failed to keep the working classes in line, the English Parliament enacted a flat tax of 1 s on everyone over the age of fifteen. Considering the draconian measures that had preceded it and the fact that this was the second such tax in less than a year, it is hardly surprising that the peasants of Kent and Essex Counties rose in revolt. Under the leadership of anex-soldier named Walter (Wat) Tyler and a defrocked priest named John Ball, they ravaged the countryside, overran Rochester Castle, stormed London, burned and murdered their way through town, sacked the Tower of London, killed the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Treasurer and paraded their heads through the streets of the city. In an act of unparalleled bravery, the fourteen-year-old King Richard II met with Tyler and his mob in an attempt to arrange a truce. The boy-king promised that if the mob would go home, the tax would be rescinded, more latitude would be given to the peasants, serfdom would be abolished and no reprisals would take place. Tyler himself was killed when he made an attempt on the King’s life, but the mob of thousands quietly dispersed. Richard undoubtedly meant what he had said, but as a minor, his word was not yet law. The Privy Council forced him to renege on his agreement. Later, addressing the representatives of the peasants, Richard is recorded to have said: ‘serfs and peasants you are and serfs and peasants ye shall remain’. Hardly a statement likely to engender good behaviour among the masses.
Detail of a Dutch engraving of about 1590, one in a series of fifty-three showing the massacre of the protestant citizens of Antwerp by the Spanish on 5 November 1576. Here we see three victims being tortured by suspension. The male is being suspended by his genitalia, the female by her breasts and the man in the background by his wrists. We do not think anything further needs to be said here to convey the agony of the victims which is not otherwise clear in the image.
As enlightened as he had been as a teenager, the harsh realities of politics and life in the Middle Ages eventually made King Richard as hard as his ministers. In 1383, an Irish monk gained an audience with the king and openly accused the Duke of Lancaster of treason. Whether or not Richard looked into the matter is unknown, but his reaction toward the monk’s effrontery was recorded by a court chronicler. ‘Lord Holland and Sir Henry Greene, Knight, came to this friar and, putting a cord about his neck, tied the other end about his privy members and after hanging him up from the ground [by this rope], laid a stone upon his belly, with the weight thereof … he was strangled and tormented, so his very backbone burst asunder herewith, besides the straining of his privy
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