We are sufficiently acquainted with the Catholic practice of roasting heretics--that of boiling thieves and other offenders is less generally known. _Caldariis decoquere_, to boil them in cauldrons, was a punishment, inflicted in the middle ages, on thieves, false coiners, and others. In 1532, seventeen persons, in the family of the Bishop of Rochester, were poisoned by Rouse, a cook; the offence was, in consequence, made treason, by 23 Henry VIII., punishable, by boiling to death. Margaret Davie was boiled to death, for the like crime, in 1541. Quite a number of Roman ladies, in the year 331 B. C., formed a poisoning society, or club; and adopted this quiet mode of divorcing themselves from their husbands: seventy of the sisterhood were denounced, by a slave, to the consul, Fabius Maximus, who ordered them to be executed. None of these ladies were boiled. Boiling the dead has been very customary, after beheading or hanging, and drawing, and quartering, whenever the criminal was sentenced to be hung afterwards, in chains. Thus father Strype--"1554.--Sir Thomas Wyatt's fatal day was come, being the 11th of April, when, between nine and ten of the clock, aforenoon, on Tower Hill, he was beheaded; and, by eleven of the clock, he was quartered on the scaffold, and his bowels and members burnt beside the scaffold; and, a car and basket being at hand, the four quarters and the head were put into the basket, and conveyed to Newgate, to be parboiled." One more quotation from Strype--"1557.--May 28th, was Thomas Stafford beheaded on Tower Hill, by nine of the clock, Mr. Wode being his ghostly father; and, after, three more, viz., Stowel, Proctor, and Bradford were drawn from the Tower, through London, unto Tyburn, and there hanged and quartered: and, the morrow after, was Stafford quartered, and his quarters hanged on a car, and carried to Newgate to boil."