Anne Askew was born in Stallingborough in 1521. She received a good education from home tutors. When she was still young, Anne read the Bible and learned the truth about salvation; she started to see the errors in what the Roman Catholic Church was teaching.
When Anne was 15 her older sister Martha died. Martha had been engaged to a landowner named Thomas Kyme and Anne’s father decided she should marry Kyme instead. The couple often argued religion: Anne was a supporter of Martin Luther, while her husband was a Catholic. Eventually, Anne Askew was thrown out by her husband and she moved to London where she met other Protestants and held meetings to study the Bible with them.
In 1544, Anne requested a divorce from her husband. This was denied, and documents show that spies were assigned to keep a close watch on her behaviour. One spy who had lodgings opposite her own reported that “at midnight she beginneth to pray, and ceaseth not in many hours after.”
The following year, Anne was arrested and questioned about a book she was carrying that had been written by John Frith, a Protestant priest who had been burnt for heresy in 1533 for claiming that neither purgatory nor transubstantiation could be found in the Bible. Anne was hauled in front of the Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner, and interrogated. Eventually Bonner went away and wrote a document, a confession of faith, and demanded she agree to it. Anne’s statement was simple: “I Anne Askew do believe all manner of things contained in the faith of the Catholic Church.” This sounds like she was giving in, but in Anne’s mind, the proper catholic (meaning “universal”) church was the Protestant church. Anne was released after 12 days. Her husband was ordered to take her back to Lincolnshire and keep her there; however, when she arrived back to Lincolnshire she went to live with her brother, Sir Francis Askew.
In March of 1546, Anne was arrested a second time for denying the mass, but no witnesses appeared, so she was released.
Two months later, Anne Askew was arrested for the third time. This time she was tortured in the Tower of London on the rack. (She is the only woman recorded as being tortured in the Tower of London). The officials wanted to force her to name Catherine Parr (King Henry VIII’s last wife) and other leading Protestants as heretics. Kingston, the constable of the Tower of London, complained about having to torture a woman (it was in fact illegal to torture a woman at the time), and eventually he walked out. The Lord Chancellor of England, Thomas Wriothesley, and the Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations, Richard Rich, took over. Anne steadfastly refused to talk to change her beliefs or tell them what they wanted to know. She was taken quietly and secretly to a private house to recover from her torture, but as a result of the torture, her joints were dislocated and she could not walk.
On June 18, 1546, Anne was convicted of heresy. She was condemned to be burned to death. Anne took the news bravely. On July 16, 1546, Anne Askew was martyred in Smithfield, London. Because of the torture Anne had to be carried to the stake on the chair. Three other Protestants were burned with her.
Anne’s faithfulness despite family pressure, arrest, torture, and death are an inspiration to believers. She faced everything with a strength that can be attributed to both her knowledge of Scripture and her hours spent in prayer.
by Miss Dorothy
