The preamble of the statute states that one
Richard Roose or Coke, a cook, by putting poison in some food intended
for the household of the Bishop of Rochester, and for the poor of the
parish in which his lordship's palace was situated in Lambeth Marsh,
occasioned the death of a man and a woman, and the serious illness of
several others. He was found guilty of treason, and sentenced to be
boiled to death, without benefit of clergy, that is, that no abatement
of the sentence was to be made on account of his ecclesiastical
connection, nor to be allowed any indemnity such as was commonly the
privilege of clerical offenders. He was publicly boiled to death at
Smithfield, and the act ordained that all manner of poisoners should
meet with the same doom henceforth.

A maid-servant, for poisoning her mistress, was, in 1531, boiled to
death in the market-place of King's Lynn. Another instance of a servant
poisoning the persons with whom she lived was Margaret Davy, who
perished at Smithfield, in 1542.

This cruel law did not remain long on the Statute Books; shortly after
the death of Henry VIII., and in the reign of the next king, Edward VI.,
it was, in 1547 repealed. The punishment of boiling alive was by no
means uncommon before the enactment of Henry VIII., both in England and
on the Continent.

Beheading.

Beheading, as a mode of punishment, had an early origin. Amongst the
Romans it was regarded as a most honourable death. It is asserted that
it was introduced into England from Normandy by William the Conqueror,
and intended for the putting to death of criminals belonging to the
higher grades of society. The first person to suffer beheading was
Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon, Northampton, and Northumberland, in 1076.

Since the days of the first Norman king down to the time of George the
Second in 1747, two monarchs, and not a few of the most notable of the
nobility of Great Britain, at the Tower, Whitehall, near the historic
Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and other places have closed their noble, and in
some instances ignoble, careers at the hands of the headsman.

Charles I. is perhaps the most famous of kings that have been beheaded.
On January 30th, 1649, on a scaffold raised before the Banqueting House
at Whitehall, he was executed. Within the Banqueting Hall of the Castle
of Fotheringay, on February 8th, 1587, the executioner from the Tower,
after three blows from an axe, severed the head from the body of Mary,