Richard Roose

Cases of deliberate, fatal poisoning were relatively rare in England, being known more by reputation than from experience.[18] This was particularly when compared with traditionally high-profile felonies such as rape and burglary[19] and it was considered an un-English crime.[20] Although there was a genuine fear of poisoning among the upper classes—which led to elaborate food tasting rituals at formal feasts—food poisoning from poor hygiene or misuse of natural ingredients was far more common an occurrence than deliberate poisoning with intent.[21]

During his racking, Roose admitted to putting what he believed to have been laxative[8]—he described it as "a certain venom or poison"[22][38]—in the porridge pot as a joke.[38] Bernard argues that an accident of this nature is by no means unthinkable.[8] Roose himself claimed that the white[1] powder would cause discomfort and illness but would not be fatal and that the intention was merely to tromper Fisher's servants with a purgative,[22] or as Chapuys reported, to "make his fellow servants very sick without endangering their lives or doing them any harm".[19]

Bernard suggests Roose's confession raises a number of questions: "Was it more sinister than that? ... And if it was more than a prank that went disastrously wrong, was Fisher its intended victim?"[8] Dowling notes that Roose failed to provide any information as to the instigators of the crime, despite being severely tortured, which she argues is an indication that he was persuaded to act on another's behalf and as such to withstand interrogation.[17] Chapuys himself expressed doubts as to Roose's supposed motivation, and the extant records do not indicate the process by which Richard Fisher or the authorities settled on Roose as the culprit in the first place.[19]

Hall—who provides a detailed and probably reasonably accurate account of the attack[15]—suggests that the culprit was not Roose himself, but rather "a certeyne naughty persone of a most damnable and wicked disposition"[3][37] known to Roose and who visited the cook at his workplace. Hall relates the story of the buttery: in this, he suggested that this acquaintance had despatched Roose to fetch him more drink and while he was out of the room, poisoned the pottage,[37] which suggestion Bernard supports.[8]

Bernard has also theorised that since Fisher had been a thorn[8][16] in the King's side over his Great Matter, it is possible that Henry intended to frighten or perhaps kill the Bishop.[8] The scholar John Matusiak argues that "no other critic of the divorce among the kingdom's elites would, in fact, be more outspoken and no opponent of the looming breach with Rome would be treated to such levels of intimidation" as Fisher.[39]

The King, though, comments the historian Stanford Lehmberg, was "greatly disturbed" at the news, not only because of his own paranoia regarding poison but also perhaps fearful that he would be implicated, for example, as having bribed Roose.[22] Chapuys appears to have at least suspected Henry of over-dramatising Roose's crime in a Machiavellian effort to distract attention from his and the Boleyns' own poor relations with the Bishop.[40] Henry may also have been reacting to a popular rumour of his culpability.[36] Such a rumour seems to have gained traction in parts of the country already ill-disposed to the Queen[14] by parties in favour of remaining in the Roman church.[41] It is likely that although Henry was determined to bring England's clergy directly under his control—as his laws against praemunire demonstrated—the situation had not yet worsened to the extent that he wanted to be seen as an open enemy of the church or its senior echelons.[36]

Rex has suggested that Boleyn and her family, even if through their own agents, is as likely a culprit as the King.[16] Chapuys originally suggested this possibility to the Emperor in his letter of March 1531, telling Charles that "the king has done well to show dissatisfaction at this; nevertheless, he cannot wholly avoid some suspicion, if not against himself, whom I think too good to do such a thing, at least against the lady and her father".[11][42] The ambassador seems to have believed that, while it was unlikely that the king had been involved in the conspiracy—being "too noble-minded to have recourse to such means"—Boleyn was a different matter. The medievalist Alastair Bellany argues that, to contemporaries, while the involvement of the King in such an affair would have been incredible, "poisoning was a crime perfectly suited to an upstart courtier or an ambitious whore"[43] such as she was portrayed by her enemies.[43]

The Spanish Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneira—writing in the 1590s—placed the blame firmly on Boleyn herself, writing how "she had wished to see Rochester dead ever since he had defended the cause of the queen with such valour. Out of this hatred, she had previously tried to murder him, bribing one of the Bishop's cooks, called Richard Roose."[44] It was, says de Ribadeneira, only God's will that the Bishop did not eat as he was presumably expected to, although he also believed that "all the servants who did eat died".[44] The historian Elizabeth Norton argues that while Boleyn "was no murderess", the case is indicative of her unpopularity, to the extent that "that anything could be believed of her".[14]

Roose was never tried in open court for the crime he was accused of, and so had no opportunity to defend himself.[45] Rather, while he remained imprisoned, on 28 February[11] the King addressed the lords of parliament for an hour and a half, mostly on the matter of the poisonings,[22] "in a lengthy speech expounding his love of justice and his zeal to protect his subjects and to maintain good order in the realm" comments the historian William R. Stacy.[34] This highly individual response to a felony—based purely on the King's opinions as it was[46]—was presented as emphasising the King's own virtues: care for his subjects and God's peace.[13] Roose was, therefore, effectively condemned on the strength of Henry's personal interpretation of the events of 18 February rather than any evidence, witnesses or confessions as may have been available to him.[47]

Instead of being condemned by his peers, as would have been usual,[45] Rouse was judged by parliament.[31] The final Bill was probably written by Henry's councillors[48]—although its brevity indicates to Stacy that the King may have drafted it himself[40]—and underwent adjustments before it was finally promulgated. An earlier draft, for example, did not name Roose's victims or call the offence treason (rather it was termed "voluntary murder").[note 9] The legal historian Krista Kesselring suggests the shift in emphasis from felony to treason stemmed from Henry's political desire to restrict the privilege of benefit of clergy.[51] Fisher was a staunch defender of the privilege, and, says Kesselring, "would not have welcomed an attempt to use the assault upon his household to justify an attack on clerical immunities".[52] As a result, the "celebrated"[53] An Acte for Poysonyng[19]—an example of 16th-century "knee-jerk" legislation, according to the historian Robert Hutchinson[54]—was passed. Indeed, Lehmberg suggests that "despite its barbarity, the bill[note 10] seems to have passed both Houses easily".[22] The King, in his speech, emphasised that[56]

His Highnes...considering that mannes lyfe above all thynges is chiefly to be favoured, and voluntary murderes moste highly to be detested and abhorred, and specyally of all kyndes of murders poysonynge, Which in this Realme hitherto the Lorde be thanked hath ben moste rare and seldome comytted or practysed...[57]

Henry's essentially ad hoc augmentation of the Law of Treason has led historians to question his commitment to common law.[31] Stacy comments that "traditionally, treason legislation protected the person of the King and his immediate family, certain members of the government, and the coinage, but the public clause in Roose's attainder offered none of these increased security".[46] Despite its cruelty, it was seen as politically useful to have a law "which enabled the crown to strike down quickly individuals it perceived as particularly threatening and dangerous, and to do so without recourse to the common-law courts".[58] Henry's legislation not only "enacted a host of capital statutes" but eleven such pieces expanded treason's legal definition.[59] It effectively announced murder by poison to be a new phenomenon for the country and for the law,[60] and, in so far it was felonious, it was a felony without benefit of clergy.[61]

An attainder was presented against Roose, which meant that he was found guilty with no common law proceedings being necessary[8][62][note 11] even though, as a prisoner of the crown, there was no impediment to placing him on trial.[64] As a result of the deaths at Fisher's house, parliament—probably at the King's insistence[65]—ensured that the Acte determined that murder by poison would henceforth be treason, to be punished by boiling alive.[8] The Act specified that[25][66]

The said poisoning be adjudged high treason; and that the said Richard Roose, for the said murder and poisoning of the said two persons, shall stand, and be attainted of high treason, and shall be therefore boiled to death without benefit of clergy. And that, in future, murder by poisoning shall be adjudged high treason, and the offender deprived of his clergy and boiled to death.[25][66]

The Acte was thus retroactive, in that the law which condemned Roose did not exist—poisoning not being classed as treason— when the crime was committed.[29] Through the Acte, Justices of the Peace and local assizes were given jurisdiction over treason, although this was effectively limited to coining and poisoning until later in the decade.[67][note 12]

In what has been suggested may have been a deliberate "symbolic retribution"[31][note 13] intending to demonstrate the crown's commitment to law and order,[72] Roose was sentenced to be boiled to death. This took place at Smithfield[8] on 15 April 1532,[25][note 14] taking approximately two hours.[74] The contemporary Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London described how Roose was tied up in chains, gibbeted and then lowered in and out of the boiling water three times "tyll he was dede".[73] Although Roose was not the first to suffer such a fate, it was with him that boiling as a form of execution was placed on the statute book.[73] Stacy suggests that in the manner of his execution, there was more intended than "simply to mock Roose's occupation as a cook or in a spirit of blind revenge to increase his suffering".[75] Rather, Stacy suggests, the method of execution was carefully chosen to re-enact the crime itself, in which Roose boiled poison into the broth. This inextricably linked the crime with its punishment in the eyes of contemporaries,[58] one of whom described how Roose died:[76]

He roared mighty loud, and divers women who were big with child did feel sick at the sight of what they saw, and were carried away half dead; and other men and women did not seem frightened by the boiling alive, but would prefer to see the headsman at his work.[76]

The affair made a significant impact on contemporaries—Chapuys called it a "very extraordinary case"[11] finding it "fascinating, puzzling and instructive".[19] The author Suzanne Lipscomb has noted that, whereas attempting to kill a Bishop in 1531 was punishable by a painful death, it was "an irony perhaps not lost on others four years later", when Fisher was sent to the block, also under the new treason laws.[95][96] The case remained a cause celebre into the next century.[19]

Poisoning was seen as an innovative form of crime to the English political class—A. F. Pollard says that "however familiar poisoning might be at Rome,[note 21] it was a novel method in England"[6]—and the case "transformed [poisoning] from a bit part to a star performer".[19] While contemporaries saw all murder as a crime against God and King, there was something about poisoning that made it worse, for it was against "good obedyance and order".[73] Poison was seen as infecting not just the bodies of its victims, but the body politic generally.[73] Stacy has argued that it was less the target of the attempted murder than the method used in doing so that worried contemporaries, and so it was this that accounts for both the elevation of Roose's crime to treason and the brutality with which it was punished.[40][note 22] The cultural historian Alison Sim describes how "poison made no differentiation between the life of a "gentlyman" and that of a "pore Woman".[99] It was also linked to the supernatural in contemporary imagination: the Latin veneficum translated both as poisoning and sorcery.[100]

Edward Coke, Chief Justice under King James I, said that Roose's punishment was "too severe to live long",[73] and indeed it was repealed in the first year of Edward VI's reign.[101] The affair remained case law for a number of years to come, however. In 1615, both Coke and Francis Bacon, during their prosecution of Robert Carr and Frances Howard for the poisoning of Thomas Overbury referred to the case several times.[65] As Bellany notes, while the statute "had long been repealed, Bacon could still describe poisoning as a kind of treason"[65] on account of his view that it was an attack on the body politic, charging that it was "grievous beyond other matters".[102][103] He specifically argued that—as the Roose case demonstrated—poison can rarely be confined to its intended target, and that often "men die other men's deaths".[104] He also emphasised that the crime was not just against the person, but against society.[104] Wilson suggests that "for Bacon, the 16th-century story of Roose retains both cultural currency and argumentative relevance in Jacobean England".[104] Roose's attainder was also cited in the 1641 attainder of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford.[105]

Wilson argues that historians have under-examined Roose's case, except in the context of broader historiographies, such as that of attainder, or general relations between Henry and Fisher,[19] while Stacy suggests that it has been "overshadowed by the multitude of attainders soon to follow".[31] It is also significant, Wilson says, as being the point where poisoning—both legally and in the popular imagination—"does acquire a vigorous cultural presence missing in earlier treatments".[106] For example, says Wilson, the death of King John, popularly supposed to have been poisoned by a disgruntled friar, or the attempted poisoning in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale indicate how, in medieval England, the literature rarely "tend to dwell for long on the uses and dangers of poison in the world".[106] Until Roose's execution, that is, when poison begins to "pervade ... the cultural landscape".[60] Bellany suggests that the case "starkly revealed the poisoner's unnerving power to subvert the order and betray the intimacies that bound household and community together",[13] the former being a microcosm of the latter. The secrecy with which the lower-class could subvert their superior's authority, and the wider damage this was seen to do, explains why the Acte directly compares poisoning as a crime with that of coining.[13] Penry Williams suggests that the Roose case, and particularly the elevation of poisoning to a crime of high treason, is an example of a broader, more endemic, extension of capital offences under the Tudors and Henry VIII in particular.[48]

The Tudor historian Geoffrey Elton suggested that the 1531 act "was in fact the dying echo of an older common law attitude which could at times be negligent of the real meaning of the word".[107] Kesselring disputes this interpretation, arguing that, far from being an accidental throwback, the act was "a conscious decision made to circumvent the law and to avoid political difficulties".[45] Kesselring also questions why—notwithstanding pressure from the King to attaint Roose—parliament so easily agreed to his demand, or broadened the definition of treason as they did. It was not as if the change brought profit to Henry: "the act stipulated that forfeitures would go not to the King but to the lord of the fee, as in cases of felony".[108] This, Bellamy suggests, may have been Henry's means of persuading the Lords to support the measure, as in most cases they could expect to receive the goods and chattels of the convicted.[29] Bellamy considers, that although the act was an innovation in statute law, it still "managed to contain all the most obnoxious features of its varied predecessors".[29] Elton further argues that Henry and Cromwell had "a rigid regard for the forms of trial and conviction at common law";[109][note 23] if the Roose attainder had been the only example of its kind, argues Stacy, "it might be regarded as no more than an interesting if abhorrent aberration".[110] However, it was merely the first of many such circumventions of common law in Henry's reign, and calls into question, he says, the theory that the period should be seen as "an age of legalism, with respect for due process of law and conformity to past practice".[110][note 24]

Stacy, arguing that the Roose case is the first example of an attainder intended to avoid dependency on common law,[62] states that although it has been overshadowed by subsequent higher profile individuals, it remained the legal precedent for those prosecutions.[111] Although attainder was already a common parliamentary weapon for late-medieval English Kings,[112] it was effectively a form of outlawry,[29] usually to supplement a common law verdict with the confiscation of land and wealth as its intended result.[112][note 25] The scholar Suzannah Lipscomb has argued that not only were attainders increasingly used from the 1530s but that the decade shows the heaviest use of the mechanism in the whole of English history,[95] while Stacy suggests that Henrician ministers resorted to the parliamentary attainder as a matter of routine rather than last resort.[113] Attainders were popular with the King, Lipscomb suggests, because they could take the place of common law rather than merely augment it, "without needing to cite specific evidence or name precise crimes".[95] The Roose attainder laid the groundwork for the famous treason attainders—from supposed heretics such as Elizabeth Barton to the "great state offenders" such as Fisher, Thomas More, Cromwell and two of Henry's own wives—that punctuated the rest of Henry's reign.[114]

Shakespeare referenced Roose's execution in The Winter's Tale when the character of Paulina demands of King Leontes:[115]

Poison, argues Bellany, was a popular motif among Shakespeare and his contemporaries as it tapped into a basic fear of the unknown, and poisoning stories were so often about more than merely the crime itself:[43]

Poisoning resonated or intersected with other transgressions: stories of poisoners were thus nearly always about more than just poison. Talk about poison crystallized profound (and growing) contemporary anxieties about order and identity, purity' and pollution, class and gender, self and other, the domestic and the foreign, politics and religion, appearance and reality, the natural and the supernatural, the knowable and the occult.[43]

Roose's attempt to poison Fisher is portrayed in the first episode of the second series of The Tudors, Everything Is Beautiful in 2008. Roose is played by Gary Murphy[117] in a "highly fictionalised" account of the case, in which the ultimate blame is placed on Wiltshire, played by Nick Dunning—who provides the poison—with Roose merely his catspaw.[118] The episode suggests that Roose is bribable because he has three daughters for whom he wants good marriages. Having paid Roose to poison the soup, Wiltshire then threatens to exterminate the cook's family if he ever speaks of the events again. Sir Thomas More takes the news of the poisoning to Henry, who becomes angry at the suggestion of Boleyn's involvement. Both Wiltshire and Cromwell witness the "particularly gruesome scene" where Roose is executed; the latter is shown to walk out halfway through.[119] Hilary Mantel includes the poisoning in her fictional life of Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall, from whose perspective events are related. Without naming Roose personally, Mantel covers the poisoning and its environs in some detail. She has the poisoned broth, the only dish that the victims had had in common that night, according to serving boys; Cromwell, while understanding that "there are poisons nature herself brews", is in no doubt that a crime had been committed from the start. The cook, captured, explains that "a man. A stranger who had said it would be a good joke" had given the cook the poison.[120]