4. He Was An Early Architect Of Introducing An Eye For An Eye Into The Judicial System
Okay so this one doesn't exactly cover Henry VIII in glory, but the King was an early proponent of the "making a punishment fit the crime" school of thinking - even if he didn't necessarily stringently stick to this policy himself all of the time. In 1531, when Bishop of Rochester John Fisher's servants died from food poisoning, it emerged that a cook had admitted to deliberately contaminating the meal. When Henry got wind of this, he marched to the House of Lords and forced through a bill that made murder by poison high treason - and the punishment would be that the culprit would be boiled to death. Although the bill was repealed in 1547, Henry saw that poison victims were punished in such a way for at least a short period. It's a gruesome way of introducing it, but the "punishment should fit the crime" school of thought remains strong around parts of the world today - particularly in the Middle East.
NUFC editor for WhatCulture.com/NUFC. History graduate (University of Edinburgh) and NCTJ-trained journalist. I love sports, hopelessly following Newcastle United and Newcastle Falcons. My pastimes include watching and attending sports matches religiously, reading spy books and sampling ales.
Okay so this one doesn't exactly cover Henry VIII in glory, but the King was an early proponent of the "making a punishment fit the crime" school of thinking - even if he didn't necessarily stringently stick to this policy himself all of the time. In 1531, when Bishop of Rochester John Fisher's servants died from food poisoning, it emerged that a cook had admitted to deliberately contaminating the meal. When Henry got wind of this, he marched to the House of Lords and forced through a bill that made murder by poison high treason - and the punishment would be that the culprit would be boiled to death. Although the bill was repealed in 1547, Henry saw that poison victims were punished in such a way for at least a short period. It's a gruesome way of introducing it, but the "punishment should fit the crime" school of thought remains strong around parts of the world today - particularly in the Middle East.