(Vol. v., p. 32.)
MR. J. B. COLMAN has directed attention to the special act of attainder
passed in 22 Hen. VIII. in order to punish Richard Roose for poisoning
the family of the Bishop of Rochester; but I have reason to believe that
he is wrong in his assertion that, prior to that statute, "there was no
peculiarity in the mode of punishment" for the crime in question. In the
_Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London_, which I am now engaged in
editing for the Camden Society, I find an instance of the like
punishment being inflicted for the same crime in the 13th Hen. VIII.:
"And this yere was a man soddyne in a cautherne (_sc._ a cauldron)
in Smythfelde, and lett up and downe dyvers tymes tyll he was
dede, for because he wold a poyssynd dyvers persons."
I would therefore beg to inquire whether MR. COLMAN has taken a correct
view of the statute of 22 Hen. VIII. as prescribing a new punishment,
_retrospective_ to the case of Richard Roose; and whether the act was
not, so far as he was concerned, simply one of attainder, to deprive the
culprit of the "advantage of his clargie," whereby he might otherwise
have escaped the legal punishment already provided for the crime. Having
declared Roose attainted of high treason, the statute proceeds to enact
that all future poisoners shall also be debarred of the benefit of
clergy, and immediately committed to death by boiling. Roose's own case
is recorded in the _Grey Friars' Chronicle_ with the same horrible
circumstances as those related in the former instance, of his life being
gradually destroyed:
"He was lockyd in a chayne and pullyd up and downe with a gybbyt
at dyvers tymes tyll he was dede."