In the year 1531, when Henry VIII. was king, an act was passed for boiling poisoners to death. The preamble of the statute states that one Richard Roose or Coke, a cook, by putting poison in some food intended for the household of the Bishop of Rochester, and for the poor of the parish in which his lordship's palace was situated in Lambeth Marsh, occasioned the death of a man and a woman, and the serious illness of several others. He was found guilty of treason, and sentenced to be boiled to death, without benefit of clergy, that is, that no abatement of the sentence was to be made on account of his ecclesiastical connection, nor to be allowed any indemnity such as was commonly the privilege of clerical offenders. He was publicly boiled to death at Smithfield, and the act ordained that all manner of poisoners should meet with the same doom henceforth.

A maid-servant, for poisoning her mistress, was, in 1531, boiled to death in the market-place of King's Lynn. Another instance of a servant[107] poisoning the persons with whom she lived was Margaret Davy, who perished at Smithfield, in 1542.

This cruel law did not remain long on the Statute Books; shortly after the death of Henry VIII., and in the reign of the next king, Edward VI., it was, in 1547 repealed. The punishment of boiling alive was by no means uncommon before the enactment of Henry VIII., both in England and on the Continent.

[108]