Although many people were put to death over the course of the Queen's reign, very few were actually beheaded. Beheadings were reserved for people of status, and hanging was the more common method of execution for the ordinary people,  burning for religious dissidents. Elizabeth was always greatly troubled when required to sign a death warrant, and in the case of the Duke of Norfolk, the first nobleman to go to the block in the Queen's reign, she cancelled the warrant twice.