If you’re a king or a queen, there’s nothing quite like thinking up the most hideous form of execution for a traitor. What you want is a good plot against one’s royal self, followed by
instruments of extreme torture, topped off by a beheading or possibly some hanging, drawing, and quartering. London has played host to many traitors to the Crown—some bad, some perhaps not
so bad—as well as rebels and turncoats who had to break the laws of their day to get a better life. Read, amongst many stories of rebellion, about the Gunpowder Plot, the execution of
Charles I, the dim duke and his rubbish plots to seize the throne, the conspiracies against Elizabeth I, the grandmother of Girl Power, and the riots for the right to vote.
