18 June 1546 A.D. Ann Askew Convicted of Heresy. Racked and tortured under the Bishop of London, Ed Bonner, she was finally burned at the stake on 16 Jul 1546 A.D. Where was Mr. (Canterbury) Cranmer? Hiding or hanging low in Kent and at Canterbury? Mr. John Foxe includes her in his martyriology.
Wiki offers some connections.
Anne Askew (née Anne Ayscough or Ascue, married name Anne Kyme) (born 1520/1521 – died 16 July 1546)[1] was an English poet and Protestant who was condemned as a heretic. She is the only woman on record known to have been both tortured in the Tower of London and burnt at the stake. She is also one of the earliest female poets to compose in the English language and the first Englishwoman to demand a divorce (especially, as an innocent party on scriptural grounds).[2]
Contents
- 1 Life
- 2 Background on 1546
- 3 Arrest and interrogation
- 4 Execution
- 5 Legacy
- 6 Examinations
- 7 In popular culture
- 8 Footnotes
- 9 References
- 10 External links
Life
Anne Askew was born in 1521 in Lincolnshire, England. William Askew, a wealthy landowner, was her father. William was a gentleman in the court of King Henry VIII, as well as a juror in the trial of Anne Boleyn's co-accused.[3] William had arranged that his eldest daughter, Martha, be married to Thomas Kyme. When Anne was 15 years old Martha died. William decided Anne would take Martha’s place in the marriage to Thomas.[4]
Anne was an avid Protestant. She studied the bible and memorized verses. She was true to her belief for the entirety of her life. Unfortunately, Thomas was a Catholic, which resulted in a brutal marriage between Anne and him. Anne had two children with Thomas before he threw her out for being Protestant.[4] It’s said that Anne was seeking to divorce him, so being kicked out did not upset her.[4]
Upon being thrown out, Anne moved to London. Here she met other Protestants and studied the bible. Anne stuck to her last name Askew, rather than her husband’s name. While in London, Anne became a “gospeler” or a preacher.[5]
In March 1545, Thomas had Anne arrested. She was brought back to Lincolnshire, where Thomas demanded her to stay. The order was short lived, as Anne escaped and returned to London to continue preaching. In 1546 she was arrested again, but released. In May 1546 she was arrested again, and tortured in the Tower of London. (She is the only woman recorded to have been tortured there.) She was ordered to give up likeminded women, but Anne refused. The torturers, Lord Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley and Sir Richard Rich, attempted to torture Anne using a device called the rack, which stretches the persons limbs eventually causing dislocation. Anne refused to alter her beliefs. On June 18th, 1546, Anne was convicted of heresy, and was condemned to be burned to death.[4]
July 16th, 1546, Anne Askew was martyred in Smithfield, London. Due to the torture she endured, Anne had to be carried to the stake on a chair. She burned to death, along with three other Protestants.[4]
Background on 1546
In the last year of Henry VIII's reign, Askew was caught up in a court struggle between religious traditionalists and reformers. Stephen Gardiner was telling the king that diplomacy – the prospect of an alliance with the Catholic Emperor Charles V — required a halt to religious reform. The traditionalist party pursued tactics tried out three years previously, with the arrests of minor evangelicals in the hope that they would implicate those who were more highly placed. In this case measures were taken that were "legally bizarre and clearly desperate".[6] The persons rounded up were in many cases strongly linked to Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, who spent most of the period absent from court in Kent: Askew's brother Edward Ayscough was one of his servants, and Nicholas Shaxton who was brought in to put pressure on Askew to recant was acting as a curate for Cranmer at Hadleigh. Others in Cranmer's circle who were arrested were Rowland Taylor and Richard Turner.[6]
The traditionalist party included Thomas Wriothesley and Richard Rich who racked Askew in the Tower, Edmund Bonner and Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. The intention of her interrogators may have been to implicate the Queen, Catherine Parr, through the latter's ladies-in-waiting and close friends, who were suspected of having also harboured Protestant beliefs. These ladies included the Queen's sister, Anne Parr, Katherine Willoughby, Anne Stanhope, and Anne Calthorpe. Other targets were Lady Denny and Lady Hertford, wives of evangelicals at court.[6]
Arrest and interrogation
Anne Askew underwent two "examinations" before she was finally burned at the stake for heresy.
First Examination: On 10 March 1545, the aldermen of London ordered for her to be detained under the Six Articles Act; She was accused of heresy and acts against the Catholic church. Askew stood trial before the "quest", which was an official heresy hearing commission. She was then cross examined by the chancellor of the Bishop of London, Emmund Bonner. He ordered to have her imprisoned for 12 days. During this time she refused to make any sort of confession. Her cousin Brittayn was finally allowed to visit her after the 12 days to bail her out.[7]
The Second Examination: On 19 June 1546 Askew was, yet again, locked away in prison. She was then subject to a two-day long period of cross examination led by Chancellor Sir Thomas Wriothesley, Stephen Gardiner, The Bishop of Winchester (John Dudley), and Sir William Paget (the king's principal secretary). They threatened her with execution but she still refused to confess, name fellow Protestants, or convert back to Catholicism. She was then ordered to be tortured. Her torturers did so, probably motivated by the desire for Askew to admit that Queen Katherine Parr was also a practicing Protestant.[7] According to her own account, and that of gaolers within the Tower, she was tortured only once. She was taken from her cell, at about ten o'clock in the morning, to the lower room of the White Tower. She was shown the rack and asked if she would name those who believed as she did. Askew declined to name anyone at all, so she was asked to remove all her clothing except her shift. Askew then climbed onto the rack and her wrists and ankles were fastened. Again, she was asked for names, but she would say nothing.[8] The wheel of the rack was turned, pulling Askew along the device and lifting her so that she was held taut about 5 inches above its bed and slowly stretched. In her own account written from prison, Askew said she fainted from pain, and was lowered and revived.[9] This procedure was repeated twice. Kingston refused to carry on torturing her, left the tower, and sought a meeting with the king at his earliest convenience to explain his position and also to seek his pardon, which the king granted. Wriothesley and Rich set to work themselves.[8] They turned the handles so hard that Anne was drawn apart, her shoulders and hips were pulled from their sockets and her elbows and knees were dislocated. Askew's cries could be heard in the garden next to the White Tower where the Lieutenant's wife and daughter were walking. Askew gave no names, and her ordeal ended when the Lieutenant ordered her to be returned to her cell.[10]
Askew was burnt at the stake, after being found guilty of acts against the Catholic Church on 16 July 1546.
Execution
Anne Askew was burned at the stake at Smithfield, London, aged 26, on 16 July 1546, with John Lascelles and two other Protestants.[11] She was carried to execution in a chair wearing just her shift as she could not walk and every movement caused her severe pain.[12] She was dragged from the chair to the stake which had a small seat attached to it, which she sat astride. Chains were used to bind her body firmly to the stake at the ankles, knees, waist, chest and neck. Because of her recalcitrance she was burned alive slowly rather than being strangled first or burned quickly. Those who saw her execution were impressed by her bravery, and reported that she did not scream until the flames reached her chest. The execution lasted about an hour and she was unconscious and probably dead after fifteen minutes or so. Prior to their death, the prisoners were offered one last chance at pardon. Bishop Shaxton mounted the pulpit and began to preach to them. His words were in vain, however. Anne listened attentively throughout his discourse. When he spoke anything she considered to be the truth she audibly expressed agreement, but when he said anything contrary to what she believed Scripture stated, she exclaimed; "There he misseth, and speaketh without the book."[13]
Legacy
Anne wrote a first-person account of her ordeal and her beliefs, which was published as the Examinations by John Bale, and later in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments of 1563 which proclaims her as a Protestant martyr. The story of Askew's martyrdom was thus written into the Protestant hagiography, but as MacCulloch comments, under a version of her unmarried name (which he attributes to some embarrassment over her desertion of her husband Kyme).[14] He notes that Robert Parsons picked up on this aspect of the story.[15]
John Bale and John Foxe's writings on Askew are the most well-known accounts of her life, but a closer look at their writing causes some critics to question whether these editors help or hurt readers' understanding of Anne Askew. John Bale was the first publish any work commemorating Askew's life, and he claimed to have taken purely Askew's writings and added only a preface and notes, but critics Thomas S. Freeman and Sarah Elizabeth Wall contest this claim (1169). It is unlikely that Bale invented the entire text, but they find that certain quotes within Askew's narrative have a Baleian tone (1169), and some sections may have been deleted (1170). The exacts are unknown, but Bale seems to have made considerable changes to the account. They also point out that Bale's work has imposed a misogynistic misreading on the narrative. Askew is a woman who is remembered for taking a stand against the church's oppression, but Bale insists on her being a “weak vessel of the lord” (1166). Her narrative clearly disproves this, and shows that she was an educated woman who actively fought and challenged male control. Because of these criticisms, some argue that Askew's story is improved if read independently of Bale's notes and additions in order to understand her legacy without the distraction of an intrusive author (1167). Foxe's translation and interpretation are often considered an improvement from Bale's original. He eliminated Bale's notes and frames the story more around Askew's narrative (1167). But Foxe also took some artistic liberties by altering language to make certain allusions more obvious (1171) and breaking the narrative into paragraphs (1177). Critics have noted six clear Biblical citation errors within the work (1171), and Foxe also added new information that may have become known through eye witnesses coming forward with new details, but the exact sources are unclear (1185). While Bale is criticized and Foxe is often commended for doing a better job with capturing her narrative, it is important to point out the accountability issues with the two texts principally responsible for Askew's legacy.[16]
Examinations
Anne Askew’s autobiographical and published Examinations chronicle her persecution and offer a unique look into 16th century femininity, religion, and faith. Her writing is revolutionary because it deviates completely from what we think and expect from “Tudor women or, more specifically, Tudor women martyrs” (51). It depicts her confrontations with male authority figures of the time who challenged every aspect of life from her progressive divorce, which she initiated, to her religious beliefs, which set her a part in England as a devout Protestant woman. Her ability to avoid indictment in 1545 points to what Paula McQuade calls Askew’s “real brilliance”, showing “her being familiar enough with English law to attempt to use the system to her benefit (52). While her Examinations are a rare record of her experiences as a woman in Tudor England, they also show her unique position in this world as an educated woman. Not only was she able to write down her experiences, she was also able to correspond with select learned men of the time, such as John Lascelles and Dr. Edward Chrome who was also arrested for heresy. As stated above, Askew's Examinations aren’t perfect and were altered by John Bale and John Foxe, but read as they were originally intended, Anne Askew’s writing is one of the most important autobiographical accounts of 16th century religious turmoil we have to date and is a testament to her intelligence and bravery.[17]
In popular culture
In Season Four of the television programme The Tudors, she was portrayed by Emma Stansfield.[18]
Footnotes
References
- Askew, Anne (1996). Beilin, Elaine V., ed. The Examinations of Anne Askew. Women Writers in English 1350–1850. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-510849-3.
- Fedele, Gene (2003). Heroes of Faith. Bridge-Logos. ISBN 0-88270-934-8.
- Foxe, John (1838). Cattley, Stephen Reed, ed. The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe: A New and Complete Edition V. London: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside.
- Freeman, Thomas S.; Wall, Sarah E. (Winter 2001). "Racking the Body, Shaping the Text: The Account of Anne Askew in Foxe's Book of Martyrs"". Renaissance Quarterly (University of Chicago Press) 54 (4(1)): 1165–1196. JSTOR 1261970. (subscription required (help)).
- Fuller, Thomas; Nuttall, Austin P. (1840). The History of the Worthies of England I. A new edition containing brief notices of the most celebrated worthies of England who have flourished since the time of Fuller; with explanatory notes and copious indexes by P. Austin Nuttall. London: T. Tegg.
- Fuller, Thomas; Nuttall, Austin P. (1840). The History of the Worthies of England II. A new edition containing brief notices of the most celebrated worthies of England who have flourished since the time of Fuller; with explanatory notes and copious indexes by P. Austin Nuttall. London: T. Tegg.
- Fuller, Thomas (1840). Nuttall, Austin P., ed. The History of the Worthies of England III. A new edition containing brief notices of the most celebrated worthies of England who have flourished since the time of Fuller; with explanatory notes and copious indexes by P. Austin Nuttall. London: T. Tegg.
- Gairdner, James (1885). "Askew, Anne". In Stephen, Leslie. Dictionary of National Biography 2. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 190–192.
- Hickerson, Megan L. (April 2006) [First published online 17 Nov. 2006]. "'Ways of Lying': Anne Askew and the Examinations". Gender & History (Wiley Online Library) 18 (1): 50–65. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0424.2006.00414.x. (subscription required (help)).
- Ives, Eric (2005). The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn: 'The Most Happy'. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4051-3463-7.
- Jones, Douglas M.; Jones, Paula (2007). The Queen's Friend: A Play (DVD). Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press. ISBN 9781591282181. OCLC 814419948.
- Lindsey, Karen (1995). Divorced, Beheaded, Survived. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0201408236.
- MacCulloch, Diarmaid (1996). Thomas Cranmer: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300074482.
- Merle D'Aubigné, Jean Henri (1994). The Reformation in England 2 (reprint ed.). London: Banner of Truth Trust. ISBN 9780851514871.
- Parsons, Robert (1604). A Treatise of Three Conversions of England from Paganisme to Christian Religion ... 2. St Omer: François Bellet.
- Porter, Linda (2011). Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr. London: Pan Books. ISBN 9780330460804.
- Watt, Diane (2004). "Askew, Anne (c. 1521–1546)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/798. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- Watt, Diane (1997). Secretaries of God. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. ISBN 0859915247.
External links
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Wikisource has the text of the 1885–1900 Dictionary of National
Biography's article about Anne Askew.
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