On this day in Tudor history, 5th April 1531, Richard Roose, the cook of Bishop John Fisher’s household, was boiled to death for high treason at Smithfield.
He was found guilty of high treason by an act of Parliament, but why?
What happened and why did King Henry VIII take a personal interest in this case?
Find out why in this video:
And on this day in 1533, Convocation, ruled that the pope was wrong and that Henry VIII was right, i.e. it ruled that the Pope had no power to dispense in the case of a man marrying his brother’s widow, and that it was contrary to God’s law – Catherine of Aragon should not have been able to marry Henry VIII.
This was just as well seeing as the king had got married to Anne Boleyn and she was pregnant with his child!