Given that things like bull and bear baiting were popular pastimes in those times taking the family to an execution was just part of the social life of the times.

While I don't condone corporal punishment or could imagine myself watching someone die in front of me, in some of the ways they died in the Middle Ages I kinda understand why the public watched.

Firstly, it was a form of entertainment. Sure we may scoff now with out access to movies, TV, computer games and whatnot. But consider this, how many people will sit down in a cinema or at home and watch some disturbing horror movie. Sure it's acting, but it's not something I can stomach. Those Saw movies are disturbing just form reading the plot on Wikipedia, I can only imagine how gross it is on screen. So while we may not get the opportunity to watch these disgusting brutal deaths in real life, we are still viewing them as an art from.

Secondly, I think children were taken to the deaths as a way for parents to teach their children lessons. If you steal, your hand will be chopped off like Mr Smith's was last week. You want to behave a particular way you will have your head chopped off like The Queen did the other day. I could only imagine the deterrent it must have been to misbehave.

Lousie, you raised some interesting points, and don't apologize for that. I don't feel there is anything pretentious or irrelevant about these topics. In fact, as a student of anthropology, these questions are right up my alley!

We are more alike people in the Tudor era than we might think. Human nature has not changed; cultures have, and that can dictate how we react to events.

For instance, public executions were an accepted part of the Tudor judical system. There is a lesson about morals here (as Bill notes) and a mechanism to show what happens if someone disobeys the monarch's law. Executions were committed in many western nations into the 20th century. Albeit different, they were an accepted form of punishment for certain crimes. This can apply to the US today, where many states still allow executions. The way in which they are conducted differs from the 16th century, but they are still (in many places) an accepted part of the judical system.

Some of the differences, though, are related to government and religion. In the west (and I'm generalizing here), we no longer have an absolute monarch. Governments are respresentative and elected by the people. However, our systems of law and order are informed by the Anglo-Saxons, so there is some form of historical continuity.

Religion in the Tudor era was powerful and political. In many societies, the church is separated from the state. The Tudors saw the world through a different lens than we do, but that does not mean we cannot understand their conception of the world.

Theorist Bruno Latour developed a concept I love. The idea that ancient and modern are not separate entities, disernable by the passing of time. Rather he argued, the present is informed by the past and very much alive today. I must agree with him. After I interviewed lobster fishermen for my M.A thesis, I found their concept of time different than mine. They still feel the past alive in their concerns and conflicts with the Canadian government and the fisheries department.

The Tudors could fit into this model. They may be gone, but the repercussions of their conflicts are still prevalent today, and inform our cultural understandings of the world. Henrician England is still alive today. Our behaviours and feelings about things may have changed, but we are not so far removed from the past.

Is this too maudlin? Perhaps, but I felt the need to write something to this interesting topic.

Sadly Humans tend to follow the crowd and if you imagine for example a terrorist was caught and the hatred people feel towards them, imagine a frenzy being whipped up amongst a crowd and angry people, like at a foot ball crowd they would have got a kick out of watching a person torn to bits I think. Look at blood sports and less “civilised” countries for instance, men especially high on testosterone and drink as they torment a bull, fox or dog to death, men in the Middle east high on testosterone and religious fervour as they watch a person stoned to death maybe for just having sex. Human kind will never change and my view is that there are a small minority of compassionate people who will not follow the crowd no matter what the majority too, there are only a small amount of humans are really evil, the majority fit in between and tend to be a bit ” sheep like” and do what everyone else is doing and follow along, so it’s easy to see why until very recently people went to public executions, Human kind will always be the same at heart, remove Western morals and human rights and what we see as the norm and it’s easy to see how deprave humans can become. Now a days we accept gay people, divorce and sex before marriage as the norm, go back less than a hundred years ago these were unacceptable, i think of Tudor England as being a bit like Iraq maybe or Afghanistan where women were meant to know their place, life was brutish and short, men were hypocrites and they were less squeemish, even today our meat is packaged for us but go to a third world country one must kill it themselves or the beast is slaughtered in the streets, like back then, so blood, entrails and screams of agony will have less impact I imagine.