This Day in Tudor History and the Boiling of Richard Roose

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

On this day in Tudor history - 5th April...

 1478 – Death of John Booth, Bishop of Exeter, at East Horsley. He was buried in the parish church there.
1513 – Treaty of Mechlin signed by Henry VIII, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Pope Leo X against France.
1531 - Richard Roose (or Rouse), Bishop John Fisher’s cook, was boiled to death after confessing to poisoning the soup (or porridge) that was served to the Bishop and his guests. Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, survived, but some of his guests, who’d eaten more of the soup, died. http://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/richard-roose-boiled-to-death-5-april-1531/
1532 – Death of William Bolton, royal administrator and Prior of St Bartholomew’s, West Smithfield, London.
1533 – Convocation ruled on the case of Henry VIII's annulment, ruling that the Pope had no power to dispense in the case of a man marrying his brother's widow, and that it was contrary to God's law.
1559 – Funeral of Sir Anthony St Leger, Lord Deputy of Ireland, at the parish church in Ulcombe in Kent.
1588 – Birth of Thomas Hobbes, philosopher and author of the famous philosophical work, "Leviathan", in Westport, Malmesbury, Wiltshire.
1605 – Death of Adam Loftus, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, in Dublin at the archbishop's palace of St Sepulchre. He was buried at St Patrick's Cathedral.

 

On this day in history, 5th April 1531, Richard Roose (or Rouse), the cook of Bishop John Fisher was boiled to death after confessing to poisoning the soup served to the Bishop and his guests. Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, survived but some of his guests who had consumed  more of the soup perished.
People quickly blamed Anne Boleyn accusing her and her family of having bribed Roose to poison the soup and be rid of Fisher and that her father had provided Roose with the poison but Henry VIII was not convined and there was no evidence to suggest that the Boleyns or their supporters were involved.
Today, Anne Boleyn is still blamed for this act of murder and attempted murder. In her book, “The Other Boleyn Girl”, Philippa Gregory has Mary Boleyn saying:-

“A few nights later, Bishop Fisher was sick, and nearly died of his sickness. Three men at his dinner table died of poison, others in his household were sick too. Someone had bribed his cook to put poison in his soup. It was only his good luck that Bishop Fisher had not wanted the soup that evening.
I did not ask Anne what she had said to Father in the doorway, nor what he had replied. I did not ask her if she had any hand in the bishop’s sickness and the deaths of three innocent men at his table. It was not a little thing, to think that one’s sister and one’s father were murderers. But I remembered the darkness of her face as she swore that she hated Fisher as much as she had hated the cardinal. And now the cardinal was dead of shame, and Fisher’s dinner had been salted with poison. I felt as if this whole matter, which had started as a summer flirtation, had grown too dark and too great for me to want to know any secrets. Anne’s dark-tempered motto, “Thus it will be:grudge who grudge,” seemed like a curse that Anne was laying on the Boleyns, on the Howards, and on the country itself.”

 

Gregory goes on to say in the Q&A section at the back of her novel that “she [Anne] was not a woman to let something like sin or crime stand in her way—she was clearly guilty of one murder”, so she obviously believes that Anne Boleyn had a hand in this crime.

 

In “The Tudors”, Season 2 Episode 1, after Anne and her father discussed “Bloody Bishop Fisher” - the man standing in their way. Thomas Boleyn pays Richard Roose and threatens  him with the destruction of his family if he betrays the Boleyns. George Boleyn puts a vial on the table and Roose takes it. Later we see Roose pouring the contents of the vial into the soup he is cooking. The soup is served to Fisher and his guests which include Thomas More. Fisher says he only wants a little soup and More refuses it all together. Fisher is taken ill and four of his guests die. Thomas More tells Henry VIII that people are blaming Thomas Boleyn and even Anne Boleyn, and Henry is furious saying that Anne is blamed for everything even the weather.
Roose is arrested and examined by Cromwell in the Tower but will not say who paid him - Thomas Boleyn is present. Roose is boiled to death in the Tower in the presence of Thomas Boleyn, George Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell. It is a very shocking scene.
We will never know who was truly behind the poisoning but some argue that  Anne Boleyn or her family would not have been stupid enough to try and kill the bishop.

The primary source evidence is the preamble of the 1531 “Acte for Poysoning” (22 Henry VIII c.9), which stated:-
“On the Eighteenth day of February, 1531, one Richard Roose, of Rochester, Cook, also called Richard Cooke, did cast poison into a vessel of yeast to baum, standing in the kitchen of the Bishop of Rochester’s Palace, at Lambeth March, by means of which two persons who happened to eat of the pottage made with such yeast died”.
Roose allegedly claimed he had put purgatives in the food as a joke and meant no harm but two poor people, Bennett Curwen and Alice Tryppytt, died from eating the food. Roose was “attainted of high treason” and “boiled to death without benefit of clergy. He was taken to Smithfield and boiled to death.


Read more: http://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/richard-roose-boiled-to-death-5-april-1531/#ixzz2PbC8iIU4