Continental nations still used spectacular modes of execution – especially breaking on the wheel or decapitation by sword – upon common criminals during the eighteenth century. In England, bloody and prolonged executions were inflicted solely upon traitors. Moreover, the fullest horrors of the traitor’s death – disembowelment while still alive, and the long-term post-mortem display of the head and quarters – were largely dispensed with by the end of the seventeenth century. These changes had two major causes: a sense of the limits of what might be tolerated in a genteel and rapidly growing metropolis; and the desire of governments – especially constitutional monarchies after 1689 – not to discredit themselves by displaying an excessive thirst for blood in punishing enemies. These considerations, coupled with the occasional need to execute traitors after 1689, also precluded the use of aggravated execution rituals against the other two categories of traitor: coiners and petty traitors.