Askew, Anne (1521-1546)
“I came not hither to deny my Lord and Master.” (spoken 1546)
Anne Askew and other martyrs are readied for burning.
Anne Askew’s life has not gotten any easier with the years. Born around 1521 to a notable family, she has been given more education than most girls, and this shows in her knowledge of Scripture and her ability to write. She spends much time at the cathedral reading the chained Bible and questioning the theologians. Later, while in Newgate Prison, she will demonstrate her learning again by composing a ballad likening herself to a warrior for Christ. Both her own and others’ accounts will show a tart-tongued woman of learning and wit.
Things really have gone downhill for her since her older sister, Martha, died. Martha had been pledged in marriage to Thomas Kyme, a wealthy Catholic landowner. Anne’s father, Sir William Ayscough (Anne spells it Askew) has forced Anne, at about 15 years of age, to take her sister’s place. In protest, Anne refuses to accept her husband’s name, although she bears two children by him. After 1540, Anne has an on-again, off-again relationship with Kyme. That’s when she leaves him to spread her religious views in London. Although he dislikes the form her faith has taken, Kyme acknowledges that she is the most devout woman he has ever known.
Their differences are in part because of the forced nature of the relationship but also because of religious differences, for Anne is a Protestant, Kyme Roman Catholic. During her years in London, Anne has some connection with Queen Katherine Parr, who has also adopted Reformation views. Kyme remains Roman Catholic. When Anne returns home, he throws her out of his house, so back to London she goes. Emulating King Henry VIII, she seeks an end to her marriage, but cannot wrangle it. Her grounds are incompatibility: her husband, she says is not a believer.
Anne is arrested. Kyme is ordered to take her back to Lincolnshire. He does so, but Anne soon leaves him again and distributes banned copies of Reformation books in London.
She is arrested a second time (1545) and tortured to reveal the names of other Protestants, but her lips are sealed on that subject. After several sessions of torture, Anne is crippled, but still refuses to reveal names. Her religious answers vary from the evasive to the boldly challenging.
She writes accounts of her examinations. In one, the Lord Mayor of London asks her, “You foolish woman, do you say that the priests cannot make the body of Christ?”
Anne replies, “I say so, my Lord; for I have read that God made man; but that man can make God, I never read, nor, I suppose, ever shall read.”
She writes a ballad in which she likens herself to a knight of faith. It begins,
Like as the arméd knight
Appointed to the field,
With this world will I fight
And Faith shall be my shield.
Finally the authorities see nothing is to be gained by tormenting her further. Having tried in vain to force her to agree to the doctrine of transubstantiation—that the bread and wine literally become Christ’s body and blood—they condemn her to death.
On July 16, 1546, they carry her to Smithfield in a chair, for she is too weak and broken to walk; there they intend to burn her alive. Lord Chancellor Wriotheseley, one of her torturers, sends papers that offer her the king’s pardon if she will recant; but (according to John Foxe) Anne answers, “I came not hither to deny my Lord and Master.”
A turncoat reformer preaches at her execution. Anne proves that none of her mental energy is lost, for she interjects corrections and comments as he preaches. When the sermon is done, the Lord Mayor cries out, “Fiat justitia” and orders the fire lit. Anne perishes in the flame with three other martyrs, their end hastened by bags of gunpowder tied to their bodies.
—Dan Graves
Dig a Little Deeper
- “Anne Askew 1521(?)-1546.” English prose writer. http://www.enotes.com/literary-criticism/askew-anne.
- “Anne Askew.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Askew
- Armitage, Thomas. A History of the Baptists; traced by their principles and practices, from the time of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to the present. New York: Bryan, Taylor and Co. 1893.
- Bale, John. Select Works of John Bale, D.D. Bishop of Ossory. Containing the Examinations of Lord Cobham, William Thorpe, and Anne Askew, and the Image of Both Churches. http://ia350638.us.archive.org/3/items/
selectworksofbal00baleuoft/selectworksofbal00baleuoft_djvu.txt - Besant, Walter. London in the Time of the Tudors. Adam and Charles Black, 1904.
- Deen, Edith. Great Women of the Christian Faith. New York: Harper, 1959.
- Foxe, John. The Actes and Monuments of John Foxe. London: The Religious Tract Society, ca. 1877.
- J.G. “Askew, Anne.” Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee. London: Oxford University Press, 1921 – 1996.
- “Selected Poetry of Anne Askew.” http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/428.html.
