Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Introduction: Setting up the Scaffold in Late Medieval and Early Modern England
- 1 The Body in Space: Describing the Distribution of Dismembered Traitors in Late Medieval England
- 2 The Case of the Missing Blood: Silence and the Semiotics of Judicial Violence
- 3 From Augustine to Aquinas: Death, Time and the Body on the Scaffold
- 4 Dressed for Dying: Contested Visions, Clothes and the Construction of Identity on the Scaffold in Early Modern England
- 5 The Last Words of that ‘Cunning Coiner’ Henry Cuffe: Revisiting the Seventeenth-Century Execution Narrative
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
5 - The Last Words of that ‘Cunning Coiner’ Henry Cuffe: Revisiting the Seventeenth-Century Execution Narrative
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Introduction: Setting up the Scaffold in Late Medieval and Early Modern England
- 1 The Body in Space: Describing the Distribution of Dismembered Traitors in Late Medieval England
- 2 The Case of the Missing Blood: Silence and the Semiotics of Judicial Violence
- 3 From Augustine to Aquinas: Death, Time and the Body on the Scaffold
- 4 Dressed for Dying: Contested Visions, Clothes and the Construction of Identity on the Scaffold in Early Modern England
- 5 The Last Words of that ‘Cunning Coiner’ Henry Cuffe: Revisiting the Seventeenth-Century Execution Narrative
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
O! how dare you decline from the good example of the penitent death your Lord made, that now go about to justify yourself? You must confess your sin, and make satisfaction to the world that you are justly condemned, that you may the better deserve the forgiveness for this your foul and traitorous fact.
As this response indicates, the last dying speech of Henry Cuffe was not the set piece hoped for by the state. Cuffe, who was executed in 1601 for his role in the Earl of Essex's plot, was openly defiant on the scaffold, forcing the officials at his execution to interrupt him several times. He did acknowledge that he was there to make satisfaction to his God, his queen and country for his offense, but he declared his innocence and challenged the premise of the verdict.
I was neither a party privy consenting to that tumultuous ill advised assembly under that great nobleman. I bore but the part of a child, the part of mourning and weeping. I was kept within doors and shut up all day long.
He was interrupted: ‘As you went from the bar, did you not yourself confess that you were justly condemned’. ‘I did’, said he, ‘but not for anything done on the 8th of February’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The English Execution Narrative, 1200–1700 , pp. 85 - 100Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014