Anne Askew

Woodcut of the burning of Anne Askew, for heresy, at Smithfield in 1546

Anne Askew (née Ayscough or Ascue; married name Anne Kyme; 1521 – 16 July 1546)[1] was an English poet and Protestant who was condemned as a heretic by English government which recognized doctrines of Protestant Church of England. 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-known 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]

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]

Askew was a devout Protestant. She studied the Bible and memorized verses. She was true to her belief for the entirety of her life. Her husband was a Catholic, which resulted in a brutal marriage. Askew had two children with Kyme before he threw her out for being Protestant.[4] It is alleged that Askew was seeking to divorce him, so this did not upset her.[4]

Upon being thrown out, Askew moved to London. Here she met other Protestants and studied the Bible. Askew stuck to her maiden name, rather than her husband's name. While in London, she became a "gospeller" or a preacher.[5]

In March 1545, Kyme had Askew arrested. She was brought back to Lincolnshire, where he demanded that she stay. The order was short lived; she 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 name like-minded women, but refused. The torturers, Lord Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley and Sir Richard Rich, used the rack, which stretches the victim by the limbs eventually causing dislocation of wrists, ankles, elbows, knees, shoulders and hips. Askew refused to renounce her beliefs. On 18 June 1546, she was convicted of heresy, and was condemned to be burned at the stake.[4]

On 16 July 1546 Askew was martyred in Smithfield, London. Due to the torture she had endured, she had to be carried to the stake on a chair. She burned to death, along with three other Protestants,[4] John Lassells, John Hemley ('a priest') and John Hadlam ('a tailor').[6]

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".[7] The people 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 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.[7]

The traditionalist party included Thomas Wriothesley and Richard Rich, who racked Anne 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.[7]

Arrest and interrogation

Anne Askew underwent two "examinations" before she was finally burned at the stake for heresy. On 10 March 1545, the aldermen of London ordered for her to be detained under the Six Articles Act. 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, Edmund 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.[8]

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. She was then ordered to be tortured. Her torturers did so, probably motivated by the desire for Askew to admit that Queen Catherine was also a practicing Protestant.[8] 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.[9] 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.[10] This procedure was repeated twice. Sir Anthony Kingston, then Constable of the Tower of London, 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.[9] 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.[11]

Execution

Anne Askew was burned at the stake at Smithfield, London, aged 26, on 16 July 1546, with John Lascelles, Nicholas Belenian and John Adams.[12][13] She was carried to execution in a chair wearing just her shift as she could not walk and every movement caused her severe pain.[14] She was dragged from the chair to the stake which had a small seat attached to it, on 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. Askew 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."[15]

Legacy

Askew 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, it is written under a version of her unmarried name (which he attributes to some embarrassment over her desertion of her husband Kyme).[16] MacCulloch notes that Robert Parsons picked up on this aspect of the story.[17]

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 to publish any work commemorating Askew's life, and he claimed to have solely taken 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 (or adverse towards women) 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 eyewitnesses 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 accuracy issues of the two texts principally responsible for Askew's legacy.[18]

Examinations

Anne Askew's autobiographical and published Examinations chronicle her persecution and offer a unique look into sixteenth 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 apart 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 Crome who was also arrested for heresy. As stated above, Askew's Examinations are imperfect 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 outstanding bravery.[19]

Footnotes

References

External links

Wikisource has the text of the 1885–1900 Dictionary of National Biography's article about Anne Askew.


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