Anne Askew - Infinite Women

Born: 1521, United Kingdom
Died: 16 July 1546
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Anne Kyme, Anne Ayscough or Ascue

The following is excerpted from Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World, designed and Arranged by William C. King, published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.

Anne Askew, daughter of Sir William Askew, of Kelsay, in Lincolnshire, England, was bom in 1521. She received a very liberal education, and early manifested a predilection for theological studies. She had read and studied the Scriptures quite extensively and espoused with great earnestness the opinions of the Reformation.
Her eldest sister, who was engaged to Mr. Kyme of Lincolnshire, died before the nuptials were completed. Sir William Askew, unwilling to lose a connection which promised pecuniary advantages, compelled his second daughter, Anne, to fulfill the engagement entered into by her sister. But however reluctantly she gave her hand to Mr. Kyme, to whom she bore two children, she rigidly fulfilled the duties of a wife and mother.
Her husband was a strong Catholic, and turned her out of doors. She went to London to sue for a separation, and attracted the sympathy of the queen, Catharine Parr, and many of the court ladies. At first a Roman Catholic, she had gradually become convinced of the falsity of transubstantiation. On coming to London she was obliged to suffer numerous indignities both at the hands of the Church and the civil authorities.
Her denial of the corporeal presence of Christ’s body in the eucharist caused her arrest and committal to prison. When examined before the lord chancellor Wriothesley, bishop of London, and the lord-mayor of that city, she was asked, whether the priests cannot make the body of Christ?
She answered, “I have read that God made man, but that man can make God I have never yet read.”
Yet Bumet says, that after much pains she signed a recantation acknowledging that the natural body of Christ was present in the sacrament after the consecration, whether the officiating priest were a man of holy or evil life. Her recantation did not save her. She was recommitted to Newgate, and asked to disclose who were her correspondents at court. She refused to reply, and was racked in the presence of the lord chancellor, but would disclose nothing.

The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.

Daughter of Sir William Askew, of Kelsay, in Lincolnshire, was born in 1529. She received a liberal and learned education, and early manifested a predilection for theological studies. Her eldest sister, who was engaged to Mr. Kyme, of Lincolnshire, died before the nuptials were completed. Sir William Askew, unwilling to lose a connexion which promised pecuniary advantages, compelled his second daughter, Anne, notwithstanding her remonstrances and resistance, to fulfil the engagement entered into by her sister. But, however reluctantly she gave her hand to Mr. Kyme, to whom she bore two children, she rigidly fulfilled the duties of a wife and mother.
Though educated in the Roman Catholic religion, Anne became interested in the Reformation, which was causing great excitement in the minds of all persons of thought and education at that time; and devoted herself to the examination of the Bible and other works from which both parties affected to derive their faith, She was at length convinced of the truth of the doctrine of the reformers, and declared herself a convert to their principles. Her presumption in daring to exercise her own judgment so incensed her husband, that, at the suggestion of the priest, he drove her with ignominy from his house. Anne, conceiving herself released by this treatment from the obligations that had been imposed upon her, determined to sue for a separation, and for this purpose she went to London. Here she met with a favourable reception at court, and was particularly distinguished by the queen, Catharine Parr, who favoured in secret the doctrines of the reformation. But her husband and the priest accused her to Henry the Eighth, rendered more than usually irritable, vindictive, and tyrannical by declining health, of dogmatising on the subject of the real presence, a doctrine of which he was particularly tenacious. The sex and youth of the heretic aggravated the bitterness of her adversaries, who could not forgive a woman the presumption of opposing argument and reason to their dogmas.
Anne was seized, in March, 1545, and taken into custody. She was repeatedly examined respecting her faith, transubstantiation, masses for departed souls, etc., etc. Her answers to the questions proposed to her were more clear and sensible than satisfactory to her inquisitors. The substance and particulars of this examination were written by herself, and published after her death.
On the twenty-third of March, a relation succeeded, after several ineffectual attempts, in bailing her. But she was soon apprehended again, and summoned before the king’s council at Greenwich. She replied to their inquiries with firmness, and without prevarication. She was remanded to Newgate, and not allowed to receive visits from any one, even from Dr. Latimer. She wrote herself to the king and chancellor, explaining her opinions; but her letter served only to aggravate her crime. She was then taken to the Tower, and interrogated respecting her patrons at court, but she heroically refused to betray them. Her magnanimity served but to incense her persecutors, who endeavoured to extort a confession from her by the rack; but she sustained the torture with fortitude and resignation. The chancellor, Wriothesely, commanded the lieutenant of the Tower to strain the instrument of his vengeance; on receiving a refusal, he threw off his gown, and exercised himself the office of executioner. When Anne was released from the rack, every limb was dislocated and she fainted with anguish. After she recovered, she remained sitting on the ground for two hours, calmly reasoning with her tormentors. She was carried back to her confinement, and pardon and life were offered to her if she would recant; but she refused, and was condemned to the stake.
A report having been circulated, that the prisoner had yielded, Anne wrote a letter to John Lascelles, her former tutor, and to the public, justifying herself of the charge. She also drew up a confession of her faith, and an attestation of her innocence, which she concluded by a prayer for fortitude and perseverance. A gentleman, who saw her the day previous to her execution, observes, that amidst all her pains and weakness, (being unable to rise or stand without assistance,) her expression of mingled enthusiasm and resignation showed a sweetness and serenity inexpressibly affecting.
At the stake, letters were brought to her from the chancellor, exhorting her to recant, and promising her pardon. Averting her eyes from the paper, she replied, that “She came not thither to deny her Lord and Master.” The same proposition was made to her four fellow-sufferers, but without success. While Shaxton, an apostate from his principles, harangued the prisoners, she listened attentively, nicely distinguishing, even at that terrible moment, between what she thought true and what erroneous. She was burnt at Smithfield, July 16th., 1546, in the twenty-fifth year of her age.

The following is excerpted from the Dictionary of National Biography, originally published between 1885 and 1900, by Smith, Elder & Co. It was written by James Gairdner.

ASKEW, ANNE (1521–1546), protestant martyr, was the second daughter of Sir William Askew, or Ayscough, knight, who is generally stated to be of Kelsey in Lincolnshire. But according to family and local tradition she was born at Stallingborough, near Grimsby, where the site of her father’s house is still pointed out. The Askews were an old Lincolnshire family, and the consciousness of this fact may have had something to do with the formation of Anne’s character. She was highly educated and much devoted to biblical study. When she stayed at Lincoln she was seen daily in the cathedral reading the Bible, and engaging the clergy in discussions on the meaning of particular texts. According to her own account she was superior to them all in argument, and those who wished to answer her commonly retired without a word.
At a time when she was probably still a girl a marriage was arranged by her parents for her elder sister, who was to be the wife of one Thomas Kyme of Kelsey. It was one of those feudal bargains which were of constant occurrence in the domestic life of those days. But the intended bride died before it was fulfilled, and her father, ‘to save the money,’ as we are expressly told, caused Anne to supply her place against her own will. She accordingly married Kyme, and had two children by him. But having, as it is said, offended the priests, her husband put her out of his house, on which she, for her part, was glad to leave him, and was supposed to have sought a divorce. Whether it was with this view that she came to London does not appear; but in March 1545 she underwent some examinations for heresy of which she herself has left us an account first at Sadler’s Hall by one Christopher Dare, then before the lord mayor of London who committed her to the Counter, and afterwards before Bishop Bonner and a number of other divines. It is unfortunate that we have no other record of these proceeding than her own, which though honest was undoubtedly one-sided, and is not likely to have been improved in the direction of impartiality by having been first edited by John Bale, afterwards bishop of Ossory, during his exile in Germany.
The subject on which she lay under suspicion of heresy was the sacrament. The severe Act of the Six Articles, passed some years before, had produced such a crop of ecclesiastical prosecutions that parliament had been already obliged to restrict its operation by another statute, and Henry VIII himself at the end of this very year though it well to deliver an exhortation to parliament on the subject of christian charity. In such a state of matters Anne Askew had little chance of mercy. It is, however, tolerably clear, notwithstanding the gloss which Bale, and Fox after him, endeavoured to put upon it, that one man who sincerely tried to befriend her was the much-abused Bishop Bonner. He did his utmost to conquer her distrust and get her to talk with him familiarly, promising that no advantage should be taken of unwary words; and he actually succeeded in extracting from her a perfectly orthodox confession (according to the standard then acknowledged), with which he sought to protect her from further molestation. But when it was read over to her and she was asked to sign, although she had acknowledged every word of it before, instead of her simple signature she added, ‘I, Ann Askew, do believe all manner of things contained in the faith of the Catholic Church, and not otherwise.’ The bishop was quite disconcerted. In Anne’s own words, ‘he flung into his chamber in a great fury.’ He had told her that she might thank others and not herself, for the favour he had shown her, as she was so well connected. Now she seemed anxious to undo all his efforts on her behalf. Dr. Weston, however (afterward Queen Mary’s dean of Westminster), contrived at this point to save her from her own indiscretion, representing to the bishop that she had not taken sufficient notice of the reference actually made to the church in the written form of the confession, and thought she was supplying an omission. The bishop was accordingly persuaded to come out again, and after some further explanations Anne was at length liberated upon sureties for her forthcoming whenever she should be further called in question. She had still to appear before the lord mayor, and did so on 13 June following, when she and two other persons, one being of her own sex, were arraigned under the act as sacramentaries ; but no witnesses appeared against her or either of the others, except one against the man, and they were all three acquitted and set at liberty.
The accusers of Anne had for the time been put to silence, but unfortunately within a year new grounds of complaint were urged, and she was examined a second time before the council at Greenwich. Her opinions meanwhile seem to have been growing more decidedly heretical, and her old assurance in the face of learned disputants was stronger than ever. She was first asked some questions about her husband, and refused to reply except before the king himself. She was then asked her opinion of the sacrament, and, being admonished to speak directly to the point, said she would not sing a new song of the Lord in a strange land. Bishop Gardiner told her she spoke in parables. She replied that it was best for him, for if she showed him the open truth he would not accept it. He then told her that she was a parrot, and she declared herself ready to suffer not only rebuke but everything else at his hands. She had an answer ready for ‘each of the council that examined her. Indeed, she sometimes seemed to be examining them, for she asked the lord chancellor himself how long he would halt on both sides.
Nevertheless, she was more closely questioned this time than she had been the year before. She was five hours before the council at Greenwich, and was examined again on the following day, being meantime conveyed to Lady Garnish. On the following Sunday she was very ill and desired to speak with Latimer, but was not allowed. Yet in the extremity of her illness she was sent to Newgate in such pain as she had never suffered in her life. But worse awaited her. On Tuesday following she was conveyed from Newgate to the sign of the Crown, where Sir Richard Rich endeavoured to persuade her to abandon her heresy. Dr. Shaxton, also, late bishop of Salisbury, urged her to make a recantation, as he had just lately done himself, but all to no purpose. Rich accordingly sent her to the Tower, where a new set of inquiries were addressed to her, for it seems some members of the council suspected that she received secret encouragement from persons of great influence. She denied, however, that she knew any man or woman of her sect, and explained that during her last year’s imprisonment in the Counter she had been maintained by the efforts of her maid, who ‘made moan’ for her to the prentices in the street, and collected money from them. She did not know the name of any one who had given her money, but acknowledged that a man in a blue coat had given her ten shillings, and said it was from my ladv Hertford. More than this even the rack could not get from her, which by her own statement afterwards (if we may trust a narrative which could scarcely in such a case have been actually penned by herself) was applied by Lord Chancellor Wriothesley himself and Sir Richard Rich, turning the screws with their own hands. Yet even after being released from this torture she ‘sat two long hours reasoning with my lord chancellor upon the bare floor,’ but could not be induced to change her opinion.
So far we have followed the account given as that of the sufferer herself. But it should be noticed that on 18 June 1546 she was arraigned for heresy at the Guildhall along with Dr. Shaxton and two others, all of whom confessed the indictment, and were sentenced to the fire. Dr. Shaxton and one of the others recanted next day, and it was either that day or a few days later that Anne Askew was racked in the Tower. On 16 July she and three others guilty of the same heresy were brought to the stake in Smithfield, she being so weak from the torture she had already undergone that she had to be carried in a chair. She was tied to the stake by a chain round the waist which supported her body. On a bench under St. Bartholomew’s Church sat Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, the Dukes of Norfolk and Bedford, the lord mayor, and others, to witness the shameful tragedy; and, to complete the matter. Dr. Shaxton, who had so recently recanted the same heresy, was appointed to preach to the victims. Anne still preserved her marvellous self-possession, and made passing comments on the preacher’s words, confirming them where she agreed with him, and at other times saying ‘There he misseth and speaketh without the book.’ After the sermon the martyrs began to pray. The titled spectators on the bench were more discomposed, knowing that there was some gunpowder near the faggots, which they feared might send them flying about their ears. But the Earl of Bedford reassured them. The gunpowder was not under the faggots, but laid about the bodies of the victims to rid them the sooner of their pain. Finally Lord Chancellor Wriothesley sent Anne Askew letters with an assurance of the king’s pardon if she would even now recant. She refused to look at them, saying she came not thither to deny her Master. A like refusal was made by the other sufferers. The lord mayor then cried out ‘Fiat justitia!’ and ordered the fire to be laid to the faggots. Soon afterwards all was over. Anne is said by Bale to have been twenty-five years old when she suffered. She must therefore have been born in the year 1521.
There cannot be a doubt that the memory of this woman’s sufferings and of her extraordinary fortitude and heroism added strength to the protestant reaction under Edward VI. The account of her martyrdom published by Bale in Germany, Strype tells us, was publicly exposed to sale at Winchester in 1549, in reproach of Bishop Gardiner, who was believed (whether justly or not is another question) to have been a great cause of her death. ‘Four of these books,’ says Strype (Memorials of Cranmer, 294), ‘came to that bishop’s own eyes, being then at Winchester; they had leaves put in as additions to the book, some glued and some unglued, which probably contained some further intelligences that the author had gathered since his first writing of the book. And herein some reflections were made freely, according to Bale’s talent, upon some of the court, not sparing Paget himself, though then secretary of state.’ We ought certainly to make some allowance for bias in testimony that could be manipulated after such a fashion, but we need not be sparing in sympathy for the devoted sufferer.

IW note: Askew and Margaret Cheyne are the only women known to have been both tortured in the Tower of London and burned at the stake. Askew also wrote an account of her ordeal – which included being “stretched” on the rack until her hips, shoulders, elbows and knees dislocated – and beliefs, though after her death at only 25 years old, multiple men would edit her words for their own purposes.