Execution of Richard Roose

5th April 1531

In 1531, Richard Roose was a cook in the home of John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, who in way of a prank, (he claimed) served his employer and other guests porridge which he had laced with a laxative. After the meal all of those who ate Roose's offerings became ill and two died leading to his conviction of poisoning with murderous intent.

It has been suggested, although there was no proof to back up the claim, that Roose had been paid by someone in the Boleyn family to poison Fisher, an opponent of Henry VIII’s church reforms and his plan to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.

Roose was arrested and was denied the chance to plead his case. Henry VIII's Act of Poisoning was quickly passed making murder by poisoning high treason that was punishable by boiling. Was this dreadful punishment specifically created because Roose was a cook?

Death by hanging was the most commonly used form of capital punishment for those convicted of murder and those convicted of high treason, as was Roose, were punished by hanging, drawing and quartering, so why did Richard Roose not receive either one of those punishments? I am having trouble seeing poisoning as any more abominable than any other act of murder that the perpetrator needs to be executed in such a specifically horrible way, the suggestion was that poisoning was a particularly wicked and despicable crime and that Henry's act would deter other would be poisoners - why suddenly apply the eye for an eye theory, why not just hang the man and be done with it? It seems a bit strange to me? 

Richard Roose met his horrific death, boiled in front of a large crowd at Smithfield in London on this day in 1531, his case was mentioned in the chronicle of the Grey Friars of London

        "This yere was a coke boylyd in a cauderne in Smythfeld for he wolde a powsyned the bishop of Rochester Fycher  
      with dyvers of hys servanttes, and he was lockyd in a chayne and pullyd up and downe with a gybbyt at dyvers tymes  
                                                                                        tyll he was dede.

John Fisher would survive his murderous cook by just four years, he, just as Roose, was one of many who got in the way of Henry's grand plans. He was executed for treason for refusing to take the Oath of Succession and accept the king as the Supreme Head of the Church of England.