BEHEADING

a mode of executing capital punishment. The ancient Greeks and Romans regarded it as a most honourable form of death. Before execution the criminal was tied to a stake and whipped with rods. In earlier years an ax was used; later a sword, which was considered a more honourable instrument of death, was used in the case of Roman citizens. Beheading is said to have been introduced into England from Normandy by William the Conqueror in the 11th century. Although some early manuscripts record the beheading of ordinary felons, this punishment was usually reserved for offenders of high rank. Simon, Lord Lovat, was the last person beheaded in England (April 9, 1747). The petition (1760) of the 4th Earl Ferrers to be beheaded was refused, and he was hanged. One consequence of the French Revolution was the extension of the privilege of beheading to criminals of ordinary birth, by means of the guillotine (q.v.). Beheading was only a part of the common-law method of punishing male traitors, which was ferocious in the extreme, including also hanging, mutilation, disembowelling, and quartering. In 1814 the king of England was empowered by royal warrant to substitute hanging as the ordinary mode of executing criminals; but as late as 1820, after traitors were hanged, their heads were cut off by a masked man. Beheading is now rare in European countries, most of which have abolished or limited capital punishment. It is still used occasionally in some Muslim countries. It was practiced extensively by the Chinese war lords, especially by Sun Ch'uan-fang in Shanghai. Beheading was the method of execution prescribed by the German penal code until the death penalty was virtually abolished after World War II; during the Nazi regime the penalty had been imposed in an extended range of cases.