Henry VIII had a cook boiled to death – but what does that have to do with the Rwanda bill?

As Sunak’s plan for migrants is mauled in the House of Lords, its fate could rest on an unlikely legal precedent – a fatal food poisoning at a Tudor dinner party, says Lord Falconer

‘The Bishop of Rochester’s dinner party in 1531 has paved the way for Rishi Sunak to attempt to exclude asylum seekers from the protection of the law’ (Getty)

It was a dinner party thrown by the Bishop of Rochester in 1531 that paved the way for Rishi Sunak to attempt to exclude asylum seekers from the protection of the law. Lord Hoffmann, the greatest judge of the last 40 years, told us the tale in the Lords last month.

After the party, guests became sick. One of them died. Suspicion fell on the cook, Richard Roose. Henry VIII, who had a morbid horror of being poisoned, promoted an act of parliament declaring that poisoning was treason, the penalty for which was to be boiled alive; and – this is the point – that Roose had been guilty of this crime.

No trial was to take place. The king was no doubt concerned that “lefty lawyers” might get him off. Roose was duly boiled alive before an appreciative audience at Smithfield.