Man who suffered the 'worst execution' in history was given a punishment that was 'beyond evil'
There’s no pleasant way to be executed - but one particularly barbaric method from the Tudor times has been branded the ‘worst ever’.
Throughout history, there’s been no shortage of cruel and inhuman ways to torture people but this one may take the biscuit.
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The story of Richard Roose is about as grizzly as it gets when it comes to Tudor England's penchant for capital punishment.
In 1531, he was working as a cook for John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, and was accused of poisoning his guests while working at his home in Lambeth.
It was alleged at the time that he had added some suspicious powder to the guests' porridge, as well as that of two beggers.
Everyone was suddenly taken ill, while Roose was said to have run away.
While Fisher's guests managed to survive the bout of sickness, the beggers died.
According to YouTube channel The Fortress, he was swiftly arrested and taken to the Tower of London, where he was put on the rack and tortured for information.
Roose claimed that he was told to add the powder to the food as a joke and was unaware that it was going to kill anyone.
But the reigning monarch of the time, 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.
"The King's word was final, and he also expanded the definition of treason, saying that murder by poisoning was classed as treason."
But Henry wasn't done there with his legal fiddling, oh no.
The vengeful monarch 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.
However, Henry got a little more creative for Roose, instead opting to boil him alive.
Told you it was bad.
Yep, 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.
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 cruelest of all living species."
"Even if guilty this punishment is beyond evil," put a third.
Topics: History
Claire Reid