William Cragh - Execution

Execution

Cragh was hanged on a hill about a quarter of a mile (400 m) outside Swansea, in sight of de Briouze's Swansea Castle, on Monday 27 November 1290. He was executed along with another "malefactor", Trahaern ap Hywel. Although the latter was dealt with by the town executioner, Cragh was hanged by one of his own relatives, Ythel Fachan, who was forced into that service by de Briouze. Trahaern ap Hywel was a large and powerful man who struggled a great deal as he was hauled up from the ground by his neck, causing the crossbeam of the gallows to break. Although the executioner, John of Baggeham, considered both men to be already dead when they fell to the ground they were nevertheless hanged again, "as an insult to their kin", and because it was the usual custom that hanged men could not be removed from the gallows without the lord's permission. The execution took place early in the morning, and the two men were left swinging from the gallows. John of Baggeham reported that he cut down Cragh's body at about 4:00 pm and sent it into the town at the request of William de Briouze's wife, Lady Mary. It is unclear what became of Trahaern ap Hywel, but his body may have been buried by the gallows.

The younger William de Briouze visited the house in Swansea to which Cragh's corpse had been taken that evening, and what he saw convinced him that Cragh was dead. Describing the scene some years later he recalled that:

His face was black and in parts bloody or stained with blood. His eyes had come out of their sockets and hung outside the eyelids and the sockets were filled with blood. His mouth, neck, and throat and the parts around them, and also his nostrils, were filled with blood, so that it was impossible in the natural course of things for him to breathe ... his tongue hung out of his mouth, the length of a man's finger, and it was completely black and swollen and as thick with the blood sticking to it that it seemed the size of a man's two fists together.

Witnesses reported that Cragh had voided his bowels and bladder while hanging from the gallows, which was considered at that time to be a sign of death.