Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Richard Roose/archive1

Richard Roose was boiled to death in April 1532, executed at London's Smithfield for poisoning members of the household of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. Little is known of Roose, who may have been a cook. Under torture, he admitted adding a white powder to porridge served to Fisher's dining guests and servants, as well as to beggars who received food as charity. Two people—a member of Fisher's household, Burnet Curwen, and a beggar, Alice Tryppyt—died. Fisher, who ate nothing that day, was unharmed. Roose claimed that he had been given the powder by a stranger, and stated he intended a joke, meaning to incapacitate rather than kill. King Henry VIII—who had a morbid fear of poisoning—addressed the House of Lords on the case and was probably responsible for an act of parliament which attainted Roose and retroactively made murder by poison treasonous, mandating execution by boiling. After Henry's death in 1547, his son Edward VI quickly abolished that punishment.