Gruel
. To give him his gruel. To kill him. The allusion is to the very common practice in France in the sixteenth century, of giving poisoned possets—an art brought to perfection by Catherine de Medicis and her Italian advisers.
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Entry taken from
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,
edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.