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which resorted to the said bishop’s palace, and were there charitably fed with remains of the said porridge, and other victuals, were in likewise infected; and one poor woman of them, that is to say, Alice Trypitt, widow, is also thereof now deceased.
Our said sovereign lord the King, of his blessed disposition inwardly abhorring all such abominable offences, because that in manner no person can live in surety out of danger of death by that means, if practices thereof should not be eschewed, hath ordained and enacted by the authority of this present Parliament, that the said poisoning be adjudged and deemed as high treason; and that the said Richard, for the said murder and poisoning of the said two persons shall stand and be attainted of high treason.
And because that detestable offence, now newly practised and committed, requireth condign punishment for the same, it is ordained and enacted by authority of the present Parliament, that the said Richard Rouse shall be therefore boiled to death, without having any advantage of his clergy; and that from henceforth every wilful murder of any person or persons hereafter to be committed or done by means or way of poisoning, shall be reputed, deemed, and judged in the law to be high treason; and that all and every person or persons which hereafter shall be indicted and condemned by order of the law of such treason shall be immediately after such attainder or condemnation, committed to execution of death by boiling for the same.’
    Richard Rouse was publicly boiled to death a few days later at Smithfield, an event which, because of its novelty, attracted larger crowds than attended the more commonplace executions involving hanging or burning. The opportunity for watching that particular form of entertainment died out some years later, however, when the act was repealed by Edward VI in 1547.
    On the Continent, boiling was much in vogue from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, it being the penalty imposed on coiners in France and Germany. The fate of those caught scraping fragments from coins of the realm in order to melt them down and remould them into new coins was declared in the legal code of the day: ‘Should a coiner be caught in the act, then let him be stewed in a pan, or in a cauldron half an ell deep for the body, so that the man may be bound to a pole which shall be passed through the rings of the cauldron, and which shall be tightly strapped and bound to upright posts on either side, and thus he shall be made to stew in oil and wine.’
    These executions also drew large crowds, a man boiled to death in the centre of the town of Lübeck, Germany, in 1329 reportedly attracting a vast concourse of people which had assembled before dawn and grew even larger by the hour.
    Not every boiling went well, as the records of the French town of Tours show:

‘On Monday 11 February 1488, a coiner of bad money, named Loys Secretain, was condemned by the Bailiff of Touraine to be boiled, drawn and hanged in the Place-le-Roy. The executioner, one Denis, took the said Loys on a scaffold to the cauldron and bound his legs and his body with cords, made him say his “in manus”, pushed him along and threw him head first into the cauldron to be boiled; as soon as he was thrown in, the cords became so loose that he twice rose to the surface of the water, crying for mercy. Which seeing, the provost and some of the inhabitants began to attack the executioner, saying, “Ah, you wretch, you are making that poor sinner suffer and bringing great dishonour on the town of Tours!”
The executioner, seeing the anger of the people, tried two or three times to sink the malefactor with a great iron hook; and forthwith several persons, believing that the cords had been broken by a miracle, became excited and cried out loudly, and seeing that the said false coiner was suffering no harm, they approached the executioner as he lay with his face upon the ground, and gave him so many blows that he died