Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Wikipedia
Thomas Harrison (1606–October 13, 1660) was a Puritan soldier and later a leader of the Fifth Monarchists. The son of the mayor of Newcastle-under-Lyme, he managed to be admitted to the Inns of Court as an attorney at Clifford's Inn.
During the Civil War he declared for Parliament and served in the Earl of Manchester's army. He fought in many of the major battles of the war and joined the New Model Army in 1645. By the end of the conflict he had risen to the rank of Major-General and was a noted friend and supporter of Oliver Cromwell.
He was elected to the Long Parliament for Wendover in 1646. When conflict resumed he was wounded at Appleby in July 1648. He had to return to London but was well enough to command the escort that brought the King to London in January 1649. Harrison sat as a commissioner (judge) at the trial and was the seventeenth of fifty-nine commissioners to sign the death warrant of King Charles I.
In 1650, Harrison was appointed to a military command in Wales where he was apparently extremely severe. He was promoted to the rank of Major-General in 1651 and commanded the army in England during Cromwell's Scottish expedition. He fought at the battle of Knutsford in August and at Worcester in September 1651.
By the early 1650s Harrison was associated with the radical Fifth Monarchists and became one of their key speakers. He still supported Cromwell and aided in the dissolution of the Rump Parliament in April 1653. Harrison was a radical member of the Nominated Assembly (Barebones Parliament) that replaced the Parliament. When the Assembly was dissolved, Harrison and others refused to leave and had to be forced out by soldiers. Harrison was dismissed from the Army in December.
Like many, he was outraged by the formation of the The Protectorate and the elevation of Cromwell to Lord Protector. Under the Protectorate (1653–60) Harrison was imprisoned four times.
After Cromwell's death Harrison remained quietly in his home, supporting none of the contenders for power. Following the Restoration, Harrison declined to flee and was arrested in May 1660, tried in October, and was the first of the Regicides to be executed by being hanged, drawn and quartered on October 13, 1660.[1]
Samuel Pepys wrote an eyewitness account of the execution at Charing Cross, in which Major General Harrison was dryly reported to be "looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition". This account is also quoted on a large plaque on the wall of the Hung, Drawn and Quartered public house near Pepys Street, where the diarist lived and worked in the Navy Office.
[edit] References
1893 text
General Thomas Harrison, son of a butcher at Newcastle-under-Lyme, appointed by Cromwell to convey Charles I. from Windsor to Whitehall, in order to his trial. He signed the warrant for the execution of the King. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered on the 13th.
Annotations
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Two accounts of his speech and actions on the day of his execution on 13 October 1660:
“…God hath covered my head many times in the day of Battle. By God I have leaped over a wall, by God I have runned through a Troop, and by my God I will go through this death…”
‘Next to the sufferings of Christ’, he claimed, ‘I go to suffer in the most glorious cause that ever was in the world’. And one, as he passed by, asking him in derision where the good old cause was, he with a cheerful smile clapped his hand on his breast and said, Here it is, and I go to seal it with my blood.’
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A biographical sketch of Harrison and note concerning the Fifth Monarchists …
http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/biog/harrison.htm
http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/glossary/fifth-monarchy.htm
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Harrison’s death was recorded to be particularly gruesome.
The punishment of hanging, drawing, and quartering involved drawing a condemned man behind a horse through the streets tied to a hurdle, which is a fence-like mesh of branches (much earlier, the hurdle was not used and the condemned was simply dragged behind a horse).
The condemned man would then be hung, the executioner making sure that he didn’t have a long drop, so that his neck didn’t break. After the condemned man was in agony for a while, the executioner would cut him down before the condemned lost consciousness.
While the condemned man was still conscious the executioner would cut off the man’s penis and testicles and then open him up and start removing the internal organs. The condemned man would of course die during the removal of the organs.
Quartering would involved cutting up the man into pieces after his death, and the pieces would usually be publically displayed as a warning.
As you can see, this was a most painful and gruesome way to die.
Usually, by the 17th century, the executioner was lenient and let the condemned die during hanging before they started ripping the condemned man’s internal organs out, but Harrison apparently had no such luck.