Life was often nasty, brutish and painful for criminals in Tudor England, with a host of fiendish punishments dished out by the state to wrong-doers, including some new methods of execution dreamt up by King Henry VIII himself.
Here are 5 of the most petrifying penalties employed by the authorities in the 16th century.
1. Boiled alive
Hanging was the usual punishment for serious crime, including murder, in Tudor England but it could often be a messy affair.
Contemporary writer William Harrison might have assured us that those who were hanged went ‘cheerfully to their deaths', yet executions were amateurish compared to those performer by professional hangmen of later centuries.
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