4. Trial and Executions
The trial of the conspirators for high treason took place in Westminster Hall on 27 January 1606. All but one pleaded not guilty, but the verdict was a foregone conclusion, all were duly convicted and sentenced to death.
The executions took place in two batches. The later recruits and lesser conspirators, Digby, Robert Winter, Grant and Bates, were to suffer at St Paul's Churchyard in the City on 30 January. The others, Thomas Winter, Rookwood, Keyes and, of course, Fawkes, at Old Palace Yard (i.e. near the present St Stephen's Entrance), Westminster on 31 January.
The executions were attended with all the bloody barbarity (including castration, disembowelling alive etc) that the mediaeval punishment for treason, hanging drawing and quartering, demanded. This law later fell into disuse but was not repealed until 1814. The heads and other portions of the conspirators' bodies were set up at various points in Westminster and London. A Jesuit priest, Henry Garnett, was also implicated and tried for concealment of treason because he heard the confessions of the others. He was executed later in 1606.