A kitchen porter has been sacked from her role at Sandringham House, in Norfolk, for allegedly telling colleagues how easily she could slip cyanide into the Queen's food.
Monica Traub, who had been hired in December and was in her probationary period, was dismissed without notice for "gross misconduct" earlier this month. A Palace spokesman said her remarks had been "totally unacceptable".
She was reportedly shocked at her sacking, but history reveals much harsher treatment of others accused, often without proof, of a crime regarded as an un-British practice more in keeping with the Continental character as exemplified by the Borgias in the late 15th century.
Henry VIII was given to boiling suspected poisoners slowly to death. This fate famously befell Richard Rosse, the bishop of Rochester's cook, who poisoned 15 people and killed another two when he added laxative herbs to a stew as a joke.
And a lack of evidence failed to save Queen Elizabeth I's Jewish physician Dr Roderigo Lopez from being tortured to death in front of an anti-Semitic mob when the Earl of Essex accused him of plotting to poison the queen.
The Tudor monarchs routinely used food tasters, although more recent rulers have dispensed with their services.
Other British monarchs may themselves have been poisoners. Queen Eleanor was rumoured to have poisoned Rosamund Clifford, the favourite mistress of Henry II, while James I intervened to prevent the execution of his former favourite, Robert Carr, the Earl of Sussex, who was accused with his wife of poisoning his secretary Sir Thomas Overton.