Many people are unaware that in some counties of our green and pleasant land, including Gatshire, execution by ‘firing squad’ was a common form of capital punishment in the Middle Ages. Rather than the hangman, the axeman or the stake lighter, it was the company of bowmen that played the major role in the implementation of the death penalty. What used to happen was that the offender was bound to a tree, and the bowmen, usually six in number, shot their bolts into her or him from a distance of about thirty yards. This had the advantage of being considerably less gruesome than the other three options referred to. A roasted human being is not something you want to see; nor is the smell a pleasant one. (The taste isn’t bad, mind you.) The death agonies involved in hanging are pitiful to behold, particularly in the not infrequent cases where death is a lingering one. The instances of miscreants being set free owing to malfunctions in the machinery should also be taken into account. As for the axe, this was a very messy method, and was messier still if the executioner missed with his swing and plunged his blade into the scapula or, even worse, the brain. Even when the executioner was accurate, an insufficiently whetted edge, or an insufficiently powerful blow, could mean several goes were needed to sever the head fully from the trunk.

We learn about one example of death by shooting in Gatshire in the Annals of Saint Spurius. Since these were written in Mediæval Latin, what follows is not a verbatim reproduction of the relevant passage, but a translation into today’s English. Apologies to any Mediæval Latin scholars who might have been getting excited.

AD 1169 [….] A week before Michaelmas there took place, in the wood belonging to Sir Julian de Calvados, the execution of Gregory of Almsley, a degenerate and ungodly waster as immersed in depravity and iniquity as he was unimpeded by the inconvenient protestations of remorse, who, earlier that same summer, had been convicted of aiding and abetting the nefarious and duplicitous swindler Geoffrey of Thirby in his devious and deceitful impersonation of an ale conner.

According to custom, the execution was to take place at dawn. Therefore, shortly before sunrise, the condemned was brought to the said wood and bound by a thick rope around his chest and arms to the bole of an oak tree at one end of a glade. Once this had been done, the six bowmen there present in order to perform the execution went to the other end of the clearing and awaited instructions from their superior.

‘Ready!’ said he. ‘Aim... Draw...

...EXCUSE ME!’ shouted Gregory of Almsley.

The bowmen paused.

‘Am I not entitled to a last request?’