Deconstructing identities on the scaffold: the execution of Hugh Despenser the Younger, 1326

In this article, I will argue that the public execution of aristocratic traitors should be read in a wider socio-cultural context in conjunction with the more common interpretation of treason executions as state-controlled legalised violence. The latter approach tends to obscure the issues of honour and status which define identities created in a decidedly public sphere. This is in particular relevant for the limited number of elaborate executions of male aristocratic traitors in late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century England. Concerning only a handful of men, these executions stand out in their emphasis on public humiliation and degradation, as well as in their insistence on destroying the integrity of the traitor's body. This implies a shared cultural understanding of aristocratic masculinities, founded in notions of nobility of lineage, loyalty, military prowess and physical health. Treason, as breach of loyalty, undermined this image of nobility, and indeed created a contradiction in terms: conceptually, corrupted nobility could not exist. By examining these executions in the light of aristocratic masculine self-representations, it becomes clear that these events are as much about punishing crimes and the breach of loyalty as about re-aligning cultural notions of nobility and ignobility by means of the traitor's body.