Posthumous Execution - Examples

Examples

• Li Linfu, Chancellor of Tang China during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong (712–756) in the latter years, was exhumed and executed for crimes of high treason by his rival Yang Guozhong for his implication in the An Lushan Rebellion.
• Harold I Harefoot, king of the Anglo-Saxons (1035–1040), illegitimate son of Cnut, died in 1040 and his half-brother, Harthacanute, on succeeding him, had his body taken from its tomb and cast in a pen with animals.
• Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, was killed of wounds suffered at the Battle of Evesham in 1265, his corpse was beheaded, castrated and quartered by the knights of King Henry III of England.
• Roger d'Amory (c. 1290 – bef. 14 March 1321/1322), died following the Battle of Burton Bridge, then was posthumously executed for treason by Edward II
• John Wycliffe (1328–1384), was burned as a heretic 45 years after he died.
• Vlad the Impaler (1431–1476), who was beheaded following his assassination.
• King Richard III of England (1452–1485), who was hanged by his successor King Henry VII following his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field. His body was further desecrated following the Dissolution of the Monasteries and, according to legend, thrown into the River Soar.
• Jacopo Bonfadio (1508–1550) was beheaded for sodomy and then his corpse was burned at the stake for heresy.
• Pietro Martire Vermigli (1500–1562) was burned as a heretic following his death.
• Nils Dacke, leader of a 16th century peasant revolt in southern Sweden.
• Gilles van Ledenberg, whose embalmed corpse was hanged from a gibbet in 1619, after his conviction of treason in the trial of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt.
• A number of the regicides of Charles I of England had died before the Restoration of King Charles II. Parliament passed an order of attainder for High Treason on the four most prominent deceased regicides: John Bradshaw the court president, Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton and Thomas Pride. The bodies were exhumed and three were hanged for a day at Tyburn and then beheaded. The three bodies thrown into pit close to the gallows, while the heads were placed, with Bradshaw's in the middle, at the end of Westminster Hall (the symbolism was lost on no one as that was the building where the trial of Charles I had taken place). The head of the most prominent, the former Lord Protector Cromwell, was finally buried in 1960. See also Oliver Cromwell's head. The body of Pride was not "punished" perhaps because it had decayed too much. Of the regicides still alive then, some were executed and others either fled or were imprisoned. For a full list see list of regicides of Charles I.
• In 1917 the body of Rasputin, the Russian mystic, was exhumed from the ground by a mob and burned with gasoline.
• In 1918 the body of Lavr Kornilov, the Russian general, was exhumed from the ground by a pro-Bolshevik mob, beaten, trampled down and burned.
• In 1945 the body of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was lynched, hung (upside down), kicked in the head by passers-by, and shot several times after his execution by a firing squad.
• General Gracia Jacques, a supporter of François Duvalier ("Papa Doc") (1907–1971), Haitian dictator, whose body was exhumed and ritually beaten to 'death' in 1986.