Execution of the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot in the Year 1606

Eight of the conspirators arrested for plotting to blow up the House of Lords and overthrow King James I were publicly executed in St Paul’s Churchyard and Old Palace Yard in Westminster in 1606. This print is a later impression of an etching published in Amsterdam shortly after the event. Although the setting resembles neither of the execution sites, the details of the punishments are vividly portrayed. Two of the condemned are being dragging by horses through the streets on hurdles (boards), while another in being hanged, and a fourth (not yet dead) is being castrating, disembowelled and cut into pieces.