hanging, drawing and quartering Formerly the penalty for treason. The sentence was ...that the offender be dragged to the gallows; that he be hanged by the neck and then cut down alive: that his entrails be taken out and burned while he is yet alive: that his head be cut off; that his body be divided into four parts and that his head and quarters be at the Kings disposal. Abolished in 1870. The last offender to suffer the full penalty was Francis Towneley, a Jacobite, executed in 1746, on Kennington Common.