Who did william the conqueror execute?
William abolished capital punishment in law (it was also abolished by the preceding Anglo-Saxon royal family), in all except the fortune of battle-field. He would rather have these men fight for him in battle than hung. However he replaced the death penalty with mutilation such as castration or the loss of an eye or a hand, so the criminal could not re-offend. His son and heir William Rufus increased the penalty enforced by his father for killing the king’s deer from blinding to death, and met his own supposedly accidental death while hunting in the New Forest.
