The Origin of Weird: Richard Roose

Welcome Back And Quick Catch-Up

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Oh hey there!

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Oh hey there.

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Don't you know this is the history of buffoons?

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Well we are from Wisconsin.

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Ohrigin of Weird on the Windows.

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This is the Origin of Weird. I'm Kate.

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I am Bradley.

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Wow.

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What?

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You good?

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No. We've had some time off.

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Yes. And and sorry we didn't announce it, but we just needed it.

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Well, we needed it because we had stuff going on. It's fine.

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Yeah.

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Literally no one cares. Except for probably me.

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So this is gonna be an interesting story.

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I hope so.

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And I'm wondering if you know this one.

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Is it a weird story?

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It is.

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Better be. It's origin of weird bitches. Boom.

John Fisher Challenges Henry VIII

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In 1531, John Fisher had become one of the most prominent men in England, willing to publicly stand against the king. Fisher had been Bishop of Rochester since 1504 and was widely respected as a scholar and theologian. He had long-standing connections to the Tudor royal family and had served as an advisor and chaplain to Henry VIII's grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. By the time Henry became king in 1509, Fisher was already an established and influential figure within the English church. For years there was no reason for that relationship to become particularly hostile, but then Henry decided he wanted to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

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Aragon.

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Henry and Catherine had been married since 1509, and although Catherine became pregnant several times, they only had one child. Bloody Mary. Princess Mary. So Henry desperately wanted a legitimate male heir, and by the late 1520s, he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn.

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Sure had.

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Okay.

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So I know the name. I'm just let's keep going.

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You might know it. Yes.

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I think I might know it.

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So Fisher argued publicly that Catherine's marriage to Henry was legitimate, and he appeared on her behalf during proceedings concerning the marriage.

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Okay.

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While plenty of people undoubtedly had private opinions about what Henry was doing, Fisher was one of the most prominent churchmen willing to stand in front of the king and essentially tell him that he was wrong.

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Which is in that time frame, especially with King Henry VIII.

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So dangerous.

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So dangerous. So dangerous, it's not even cool.

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England had not officially broken with Rome in 1531, but Henry's relationship with the Catholic Catholic Church was deteriorating rapidly.

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Only because he wasn't getting his way. He was a basically a little bitch.

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Yeah.

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Why won't you give me a few? A redheaded bitch. Redheaded bitch?

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I think he was redheaded.

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Henry VIII is redheaded? Wasn't he? Not in the tutor show. Because that's a historical document.

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Maybe I'm wrong. I thought he was a redhead.

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The guy who played him? Jonathan Reese Myers? Yeah. Am I right? Yeah. I like him. He had an up-and-coming career. I I'm I know he still acts, but like he had some issues, we'll just call him. From what I understand. Again, I don't know the guy. I wish I did because he seems pretty fucking cool. I really liked him, but he didn't have red hair. And it's a historical document. Anyways, okay. I I want to look into that after the fact. Go ahead.

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So his inability to obtain the annulment he wanted was push pushing him towards increasingly drastic measures, and anyone defending Catherine was becoming an obstacle, and John Fisher was one of the biggest.

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Well, especially in the church at that time. That is a big they were very prominent, obviously, in politics, even for uh 1531, right? Mm-hmm. He's gonna be like, yeah, fisher's gotta go. Well, let's go fishing.

Poisoned Pottage And Innocent Victims

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Somebody did try to poison him. Oh shit. According to the Act of Parliament later passed in response to the incident, Richard Roos, who was also referred to as Richard Cook, put a poisonous substance into a container of yeast in Fisher's kitchen at his residence.

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Do they know what the poisonous substance was?

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They do not. Oh the contaminated ingredient was then used to prepare food for the household, generally described as por pot it potage? Not por porridge, pottage or gruel. Spell it. P-O-T-T-A-G-E pottage.

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Pottage. I guess I'm not familiar.

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Yeah.

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Interesting.

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So people ate it without realizing anything was wrong until they began viol becoming violently ill.

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They didn't notice that anything was wrong until something was wrong.

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The parliament account excuse me, the parliamentary account states that 17 members of Fisher's Fisher's household were poisoned. Among them was a gentleman named Ben Kerwin who became so sick that he died.

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Oh wow. Was he the only one to die?

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No. Unfortunately, the poison didn't stop with Fisher's household. Okay. Because Fisher was a part of the church. He passed it along.

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He passed it along to the poor. Because you said it was the yeast. They put it in the yeast?

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Yes.

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Oh, I mean, you make bread from yeast.

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So food left over from the meal were distributed to poor people who had come to Bishop's residence looking for something to eat.

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Oh no.

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One of those people was a widow named Alice Trippet who ate the contaminated food and also died.

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Oh dear.

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By the end of the incident, two people were dead and numerous others were sick, but the man who appeared to have been the intended target had somehow avoided eating the poisoned food.

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Because he's a man of God.

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So John Fisher survived.

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Well, he he was a what did you call it? He was a bishop?

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He was a bishop.

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Yeah.

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Bishop of Rochester. And we aren't sure why he didn't eat the meal.

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Or he maybe he just maybe he wasn't hungry. Or maybe he just was lucky enough not to like get sick from it.

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Later versions of the story sometimes claim that he happened to be fasting that day. Oh. Sure. Regardless of the reason Fisher escaped a poisoning that had killed two people around him. Wow. That immediately raised an obvious

Suspects Rumors And A Cook Runs

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and extremely uncomfortable question. Had somebody just tried to assassinate the Bishop of Rochester?

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Sounds like it.

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If they had, there was no short of possible motives because Fisher wasn't simply an important church man anymore.

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No.

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He was publicly opposing Henry VIII's attempt to end his marriage, and he was openly defending the woman Anne Boleyn was supposed to replace.

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Right.

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So rumors began circulating that the poisoning might be connected to the political fight surrounding Henry's marriage.

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Sure.

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Some people suspected Anne Boleyn, while others suggested members of her family might have been involved.

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I'm guessing it's people of Henry's.

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Anne's father, Thomas Boleyn, would also find himself connected to various versions of the story. However, there is no reliable evidence proving that Anne Boleyn, Thomas Boleyn, or Henry VIII ordered Fisher's poisoning. What the authorities did have was Richard Roos.

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Richard Roos.

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He was the cook.

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Let him cook. Sorry.

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Well, they do.

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They cook him? They cook him. Oh Jesus Christ.

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Once they found him, the question was no longer simply whether Fisher had been poisoned. They wanted to know why. So very little is known about Richard Roos before the poisoning, and even his name appears in several different forms in historical records, including Roos, Rouse, Rose, and Cook.

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So let me ask you something. Do they set him a fire?

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They I'll tell you here in a second.

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Alright, because I I am going to reference a song shortly.

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In 1531, legislations identify him as a cook from Rochester, although later retellings sometimes simplify that into the claim that he was personally employed as John Fisher's cook.

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Okay.

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His exact position in Fisher's household is less certain than the basic fact that authorities believed he was responsible for introducing the poisonous substance in the kitchen. After the poisoning was discovered, Roos fled, but authorities eventually captured him and brought him in for questioning. Okay. Once he was in custody, investigators wanted to know whether he had acted alone or if someone sent him. Sure. According to later accounts of his interrogation, Roos admitted putting the substance into the food but denied that he intended to kill anyone. Oh. He claimed that he believed the sustain substance was a purgative that would make the people who ate it sick rather than kill them.

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Oh, so just like uh Ipecac or whatever.

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Yeah. Yeah.

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Okay.

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If that explanation was true, Roos was claiming that this had essentially been intended as an extremely aggressive practical joke.

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Oh, that doesn't seem likely, but okay.

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More importantly, Roos reportedly claimed that someone else had supplied him with the substance. Oh dear. That possibility completely changed the nature of the investigation because if he was telling the truth, Roos might not have been the person who actually wanted John Fisher dead. Exactly. He could have been hired to deliver the poison.

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100%.

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Unfortunately, this is also where where the historical record becomes considerably less satisfying.

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Well, we are talking about the 1530s.

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Roos was interrogated harshly, and accounts circulated, claiming that he had been paid or manipulated into carrying out the poisoning. Oh boy. Despite the rumors, however, investigators never uncovered a conspiracy that could can be proven from the surviving evidence.

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Okay.

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There was no dramatic confession linking the poisoning to Anne Boleyn, her father, or Henry VIII.

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Sure.

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There was also no surviving document showing that someone within the royal court had ordered Fisher's assassination.

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Would there ever really be something to link Henry VIII, though? Who knows? He's literally the fucking king.

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What remained was suspicion, and there was plenty of reasons for people to be suspicious. Sure. Fisher's opposition to Henry's divorce was widely known, and political tensions surrounding him were becoming increasingly serious. Yeah. The Imperial Ambassador, we've mentioned him before, Eustace Chapoy.

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I was gonna bring him up, yeah.

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Who strongly supported Catherine of Aragon, reported extensively on the hostility directed towards Fisher and other supporters of the Queen.

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Right.

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We ended up talking about Eustace Chapoy in the episode where we talk about all the men that went down with Anbolin.

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Correct, yep.

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Richard Roos was sitting in custody, and Henry VIII now had to decide what punishment he deserved. Oh dear. Two people had died after eating food that Roos was accused of poisoning.

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Yep.

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So he could have been prosecuted for murder. Henry, however, believed poisoning deserved something different.

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Oh dear. It's a woman's weapon, they call it, or whatever.

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Poisoning was particularly frightening because it allowed a murderer to attack without ever confronting the victim. For sure. A person carrying a sword or knife presented an obvious threat, but poison could be slipped into food or drink without anyone realizing it, realizing what had happened until it was too late.

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Well, and and the poisoner, whatever you want to call him, doesn't even have to be there.

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No.

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He can literally put it in, leave, and the thing. It hits the fan, and the yeah, come back to the aftermath.

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So the legislation eventually passed in response to the Fisher poisoning, reflecting exactly

Parliament Turns Poison Into Treason

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that fear. Poisoning was described as an especially dangerous crime. Yep. Because it undermined the basic sense that people could safely eat and drink within their own households. Oh boy. Henry decided that the ordinary murder laws were not sufficient. Okay. So instead of simply prosecuting Richard Roos under the laws that already existed, Henry's government took the matter to Parliament. Oh boy. And Parliament was about to make the situation worse. In 1531.

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You're telling me the government made shit worse? I know. Unheard of. What the what? How is that even possible?

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In 1531, Parliament passed legislation commonly known as the Act for Poisoning.

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Oh wow.

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Which transformed murder by poisoning into an act of high treason. Treason wasn't simply considered a part particularly serious form of murder.

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Sure.

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It was an offense against the king and the state, and the punishment for a man convicted of high treason could involve hanging, drawing, and quartering. Okay. Somehow, that wasn't what Henry's government had in mind for Mr. Roos. Oh, really? The legislation legislation specifically named him and described the poisoning at John Fisher's residence. It define it identified Bennett Kerwin and Alice Trippett as the two people had died and declared Roos guilty of high treason.

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Okay.

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Roos was condemned through an act of parliament. Murder by poisoning had not been classified as high treason when Roos put the substance in Fisher's food.

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But yet they altered it to accommodate this backlog it essentially.

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The government was creating a new legal category after the crime had already happened and then applying that new draw law directly to the accused man. Right, right, right. Yes. The traditional penalty for a man convicted of high treason was already one of the most brutal forms of execution available in England, but Henry's government decided that

The Public Boiling At Smithfield

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poisoning required something specifically associated with the crime itself. Oh no. The act of poisoning ordered that Richard Roos be boiled to death.

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The Roos, the Roos, the Roos is on fire. It's Renaissance. Okay. It's Roof, but I put Roos in. I was waiting for it. Boil's close enough. Anyways, continue. You clearly have no idea what I'm talking about.

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Future murderers convicted of using poison could receive the same punishment. Sure. What made the 1531 law unusual was that boiling became a punishment specifically written into English statute law for murder by poisoning.

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That's wild.

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There was also an unmistakable symbolism to it. Roos had been accused of using the kitchen to turn an ordinary meal into a murder weapon.

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So you're putting him into a pot to boil in.

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Yes.

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In essence, the kitchen, if you will.

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Public punishment in Tudor England was deliberately theatrical. Sure. Because execution wasn't simply about killing the condemned person.

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No, it was making a fucking statement.

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Authorities wanted people to watch, understand what crime had been committed, and remember what happened to someone who broke the king's laws.

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Isn't it wild though that executions, no matter beheading, whatever, boiling, was a public spectacle. I know. Isn't that fucking wild? I know. And now you get like, ah, he's gonna get the gas chamber or lethal injection. Yeah. You have like literally the people like closely involved, like this person killed my my husband or whatever. Yeah. So the wife watches him die. Yeah. Whereas back then, as a witness of back then, it's like, yeah, come y'all, come y'all, watch him die. Yeah. It's like, that's fucking crazy.

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Right. The punishment was supposed to communicate something. Yeah. If you use cooking to kill someone, the government would use cooking to kill you. So once the legislation passed, Ruse knew exactly how he was going to die. And soon a large crowd of Londoners would know too. That's crazy. Because this wasn't gonna happen quietly inside a prison. Richard Roos was going to Smithfield, where public executions were held. That's so weird. Smithfield was one of London's established locations for public punishment and execution.

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I've heard of Smithfield. I I I couldn't have pulled that out of my brain, but I've heard of it.

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And this made it an appropriate place for the spectacle Henry's government had created. Wow. A large cauldron was prepared and filled with liquid that was heated until it was capable of killing a man.

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What was the liquid? Do you have any idea? Was it just water? Was it like chicken broth? I mean, are they gonna have a meal later? Hey, can you give me some beef bouillon? I mean, could you imagine like, so what do we boil them in? I don't fucking know. Get some oil. What's oil? Oof, that would be rough too.

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Well, I mean So Roos was brought before the crowd, secured with chains, and positioned above it. Oh boy.

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Contemporary they lower him into it.

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Contemporary and near contemporary accounts, varying some of the details surrounding the execution, but they agree on the essential fact that Richard Roos was boiled to death in public. Oh god. One chronicle describes a gruesome process in which Roos was lowered into the heated liquid and then pulled back out before being lowered again.

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Oh wow, what a dick move. Can't you just fucking keep it consistent? Seriously.

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So if that wasn't accurate, then the execution wasn't designed to kill him quickly. It was deliberately prolonged so that his suffering became part of the punishment. The crowd watched as it happened, and descriptions of the execution suggest that even people accustomed to public tutor punishment found the spectacle horrifying.

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I would hope so.

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The reaction is worth remembering because it is easy to imagine people living 500 years ago as if they were completely none to violence. Public executions were certainly more familiar to them than they are to most people today, and crowds gathered to watch punishments that would now be considered unimaginably brutal. Unthinkable, honestly. That doesn't mean the spectators were incapable of being horrified. Of course. Bruce's execution execution was supposed to disturb them. Henry's government wanted everyone watching to understand what poisoning would re that poisoning would receive a punishment so memorable that simply hearing about it might be enough to discourage someone from attempting the same crime.

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I don't even feel like it's hey, don't poison people. It's like we're gonna make a fucking spectacle of this fucker. I don't even think that he could have killed them any other way, and I feel like maybe not boiled them if they killed them somewhere some way else, or whatever you however I want to word that. I just think they wanted to be like, hey, don't fuck with the crown.

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Yeah.

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Is what the way I see it. So wow.

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So when Richard Roos finally died, the man accused of poisoning John Fish's household had become the first major example under Henry News Henry's new law. The problem was that Parliament hadn't created the punishment exclusively for him. The law remained in effect, which meant that anyone else convicted of murder by poisoning would face the exact same fate. And 11 years

The Law Spreads Then Gets Repealed

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later, someone did.

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Oh shit, really?

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In 1542, a woman named Margaret Davy was convicted of murder by poisoning. She was a servant, and although accounts differ somewhat regarding the exact circumstances of her crime, she was accused of using poison to kill someone within the household where she worked. Unfortunately for Margaret, Henry VIII's poisoning law was still in effect. Oh boy. More than a decade had passed since Richard Roos had been boiled, but Parliament never removed the punishment.

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Well, Margaret A lot of laws go on the books. Like you could go, like I saw a video just while back of weird laws throughout the states that have no fucking bearing.

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Like you can't roller skate backwards chewing gum. Yeah.

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Something as ridiculous as that.

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Yeah.

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That they're not cancelled, annulled, whatever the fuck word you use for those. Yeah. They're just there. Whereas, like, is someone really gonna enforce this today? Yeah. I get a little bit more with murder by poisoning, but like, fuck. Ah shit, I didn't realize that was on the books still.

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So Margaret Davy was therefore sentenced according to the same law and taken to Smithfield, where she too was boiled to death.

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Wow.

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The experiment didn't last much longer than Henry himself. Henry died in January of 1547. Yeah. Leaving to the leaving the throne to his nine-year-old son Edward VI.

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Before he died in Bloody Mary, and we all know how it goes.

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Later that year, legislation dismantled many of the expanded definitions of treason that had developed during Henry's reign, and poisoning lost the special legal status it had been given in 1531. Poisoning returned to being treated as murder rather than its own special form of treason, and England stopped legally boiling prisoners.

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Well, thank God for that.

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The entire thing lasted roughly 16

Fisher’s Final Clash With The King

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years. John Fisher, meanwhile, had survived the poison meal but wouldn't survive his confrontation with Henry VIII. Oh Fisher continued opposing Henry's religious policies as the king moved closer to breaking completely with Rome.

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Yep.

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When Henry eventually declared himself supreme head of the Church of England, Fisher refused to recognize his authority over the church.

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That's why I know Fisher's name.

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And that refusal landed him in the Tower of London. Yep. While Fisher was imprisoned, Pope Paul III made him a cardinal, apparently hoping the honor might offer him some protection. Nope. Instead, it reportedly infuriated Henry, who is traditionally said to have remarked that Fisher wouldn't have a head on which to wear his cardinal hat. On June 22nd, 1535, John Fisher was executed for treason. He was beheaded.

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Yep.

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Four years after somebody apparently tried to poison him, Henry VIII's government killed him anyway.

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That's why I remember Fisher's name. Yep. Okay. Well, that is fucking weird. Here's a word of advice to everyone out there. Don't get boiled to death.

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How about just not kill? Well, I suppose.

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Alright, buffoons. That's it for today's episode.

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Buckle up because we've got another historical adventure waiting for you next time. Feeling hungry for more buffoonery? Or maybe you have a burning question or a wild historical theory for us to explore?

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Hit us up on social media. We're History Buffoons Podcast on YouTube, X, Instagram, and Facebook. You can also email us at historybuffoonspodcast at gmail.com. We are Bradley and Kate, music by Corey Akers.

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Follow us wherever you get your podcasts and turn those notifications on to stay in the loop.

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Until next time, stay curious and don't forget to rate and review us.

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Remember, the buffoonery never stops.