The most dramatic of these was the beheading of the Duke of
Buckingham in 1484. A headless skeleton dug up in 1835 during
alterations to the "Saracen's Head," formerly the "Blue Boar," was
popularly supposed to be his, though records appear to show that his
corpse was in fact taken to the Greyfriars' Monastery in London. In
Queen Mary's time there was a burning of heretics in the space devoted
to violent death, a space which afterwards saw many others as
needlessly cruel. One is extraordinary in its details. A prisoner
sentenced to the lock-up lost control of himself--possibly he was
innocent--and threw a stone at the judge. He was at once sentenced to
death and removed to the Market Place, his right hand being cut off
before he was hanged. As lately as 1835 two men here suffered the
extreme penalty for arson. To the hanging of Lord Stourton, a just and
well-merited punishment, reference has already been made. But perhaps
the most vindictive execution of all was that of a boy of fifteen in
1632 when Charles I was in the town. The lad was hanged, drawn and
quartered for saying he would buy a pistol to kill the King.
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