On the vigil of St Bartholomew's Day, 23 August 1305, amongst cheering crowds, one of Edward I's most persistent opponents was dragged by a horse through the streets of London towards the site of his execution. Charged with treason and a range of felonies, the Scotsman William Wallace, scion of a minor landholding family, was subjected initially to personal humiliation before being publicly killed in elaborate fashion. About a year later, on 6 September 1306, Simon Fraser was similarly put to death for treason and other crimes and only two months later, John Earl of Atholl underwent the same fate – the first earl, according to John Bellamy, to be executed since Waltheof of Northumbria in 1075. For the next thirty years or so, aristocratic men were unable to rely on their high social status if their political fortune changed, but instead they could be subjected to a humiliating public punishment which did not necessarily end with death. What had happened between 1075 and 1306 in the attitudes towards aristocratic treason and punishment? How was treason defined in different political circumstances and why was it thought more suitable for aristocrats to die rather than to be punished more leniently?

In this chapter and the next, I will explore a different perspective on death and its impact on the body. Where in the previous chapters the focus has been on aristocratic funerary practices and the ways in which the body was perceived in honourable circumstances, it is now time to see how, if one failed to live up to the standards of aristocratic identity and the community, dishonour was rendered visible within and upon the body.