Jess Battison
While we luckily haven’t exactly had first-hand experience of it, it’s pretty common knowledge that punishments in the 16th century (and throughout history) were quite brutal.
Humans are capable of coming up with some rather sadistic ways of torturing each other, from the horrific heretic fork method to the brazen bull.
And when one man was given a ‘beyond evil’ punishment, he suffered what some people say was the ‘worst execution’ in history.
I mean, there isn’t exactly a ‘good’ way to be executed but this one does seem particularly savage.
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Richard Roose’s ordeal in 1531 could be the peak of Tudor England's habit of capital punishment, which was often made public.
He had been working as a cook for Bishop of Rochester, John Fisher, when he was accused of poisoning his guests at the home in Lambeth, London.
It was said that Roose had added some suspicious powder to their porridge, and to two beggars' bowls too.
When everyone was suddenly taken ill, it was believed the chef ran away. And though the bishop’s guests survived the bout of sickness, the beggars died from the illness.
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It’s said Roose was swiftly arrested and taken to the Tower of London, where he was put on the rack and tortured for information.
He claimed he was told to add the powder to the food as a joke and was unaware that it was going to kill anyone. But King Henry VIII led an act of parliament that made murder by poison a treasonous offence.
"On 28 February 1531, Henry VIII told Parliament of the poisoning plot, and Roose was then condemned to die based on what the King said had happened, rather than concrete evidence," The Fortress explains on YouTube.
"The King's word was final, and he also expanded the definition of treason, saying that murder by poisoning was classed as treason."
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Henry’s legal fiddling didn’t stop there as he also decided to change the punishment for such a crime, because, well, he could.
The standard practice for treason involved the criminal being dragged through the streets by a cart, then hanged, before finally having their genitals removed and their insides cut out.
But Henry got even more creative for Roose and opted to boil him alive.
Crowds gathered at Smithfield in London, where Roose was brought and dunked three times into a huge cauldron of boiling water until he was dead.
Upon learning of the barbaric sentence, some have, unsurprisingly, been utterly horrified by it all.
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Commenting online, one person branded it the 'worst execution'.
Another wrote: "It's hard to fathom the brutality these people inflicted on one another. We are the cruellest of all living species."
"Even if guilty this punishment is beyond evil," put a third.