Editing Thomas Harrison (soldier) (section)

==Execution==
Major-General Harrison was the first of the [[regicide]]s to be executed by being [[hanged, drawn and quartered]] on 13 October 1660.<ref>[http://www.axtellfamily.org/axfamous/regicide/DanielAxtellTrial1660.htm ''Selections from the Trial and Execution of Col. Daniel Axtell in October 1660''.]</ref> Harrison, after being hanged for several minutes and then cut open, was reported to have leaned across and hit his executioner—resulting in the swift removal of his head.  His entrails were thrown onto a nearby fire.<ref name="ODNB Regicide">{{Cite ODNB | last = Nenner | first = Howard | title =Regicides | date = September 2004 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/70599 |freearticle=y}}</ref><ref name="Abbottpp158159">{{Harvnb|Abbott|2005|pp=158–159}}</ref> His head adorned the sledge that drew fellow regicide [[John Cook (prosecutor)|John Cook]] to his execution, before being displayed in Westminster Hall; his quarters were fastened to the city gates.<ref>{{Cite ODNB | last = Gentles | first = Ian J. | title = Harrison, Thomas | orig-date = 2004 | year = 2008 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/12448}}</ref>

[[Samuel Pepys]] wrote an eyewitness account of the execution at [[Charing Cross]], in which Major General Harrison was drily reported to be "looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition". This account is also quoted on a plaque on the wall of the Hung, Drawn and Quartered public house near Pepys Street, where the diarist lived and worked in the Navy Office. In his final moments, as he was being led up the scaffold, the hangman asked for his forgiveness. Upon hearing his request, Thomas Harrison replied, "I do forgive thee with all my heart... Alas poor man, thou doith it ignorantly, the Lord grant that this sin may be not laid to thy charge." Thomas Harrison then gave all of the money that remained in his pockets to his executioner and was thereafter executed.

[[Edmond Ludlow]] also provided an account of the execution at Charing Cross: 
{{quote|The sentence which had been pronounced in consequence of the verdict was executed upon Major-General Harrison at the place where Charing Cross formerly stood, that the King might have the pleasure of the spectacle, and inure himself to blood." According to Ludlow, "On the fifteenth (15 October 1660), Mr. John Carew suffered there also, even their enemies confessing that more steadiness of mind, more contempt of death, and more magnanimity could not be expressed.  To all who were present with them either in prison or at the place where the sentence was executed, they owned that having engaged in the cause of God and their country, they were not at all ashamed to suffer in the manner their enemies thought fit, openly avowing the inward satisfaction of their minds when they reflected upon the actions for which they had been condemned, not doubting the revival of the same cause; and that a time should come when men would have better thoughts of their persons and proceedings."<ref>Memoirs of Ludlow, Vol. 2, p. 309, with some light editing in spelling and punctuation</ref><ref>The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, Lieutenant-General of the Horse in the Army of the Commonwealth of England, 1625–1672, Edited with Appendices of Letters and Illustrative Documents, by C.H. Firth, M.A., in two Volumes, Oxford, At the Clarendon Press, 1894, Vol. 2, p. 309</ref>}}

In his book ''[[The Better Angels of Our Nature]]'', [[Steven Pinker]] wrote about the execution:

{{quote|Even when they were not actively enjoying torture, people showed a chilling insouciance to it. Samuel Pepys, presumably one of the more refined men of his day, made the following entry in his diary for October 13, 1660: Out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy. … From thence to my Lord's, and took Captain Cuttance and Mr. Sheply to the Sun Tavern, and did give them some oysters. Pepys's cold joke about Harrison's "looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition" referred to his being partly strangled, disemboweled, castrated, and shown his organs being burned before being decapitated.<ref>{{Citation|last=Smail|first=Daniel Lord|title=The inner demons of The Better Angels of Our Nature|date=2021|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350148437.0008|work=The Darker Angels of Our Nature|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic|doi=10.5040/9781350148437.0008 |isbn=978-1-3501-4060-8 |access-date=2021-11-04}}</ref> }}

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