Anne Askew was the second daughter of Sir William Askew, of an old Lincolnshire family.¹ She was born in 1521.² When her elder sister died before her wedding, her father made Anne marry her sister’s betrothed, a neighbor named Kyme, and she bore him two children. She read the English Bible until she meditated on it day and night, and by it she came to a living faith in Christ. Her husband, a staunch papist, drove her out of his house. She went to London, where she came to know the evangelical ladies of the court and Queen Catherine Parr.¹

Examined

In 1545 she was arrested for denying the bodily presence of Christ in the sacrament. She had said, “I would sooner read five lines in the Bible than hear five masses in the church.” When the bishop’s chancellor told her that St. Paul forbade women to speak of the Word of God, she asked him how many women he had seen go into the pulpit and preach. Pressed by Bishop Bonner to sign a confession, she wrote, “I believe so much thereof as the Holy Scripture doth agree unto.” She was then about twenty-five, and she was released on sureties.¹

Arrested again, she was examined before the council by Stephen Gardiner and others. When told she would be burned, she answered, “I have searched all the Scriptures, yet could I never find that either Christ or his apostles put any creature to death.” On June 28, 1546, without a jury, she was condemned to the fire.¹

The Rack and the Stake

Her enemies wanted the names of the court ladies who shared her faith. In the Tower she named none. When the lieutenant refused to rack her further, Lord Chancellor Wriothesley and the privy councillor Rich turned the rack with their own hands until she was nearly dead. She wrote that she was laid in a bed “with as weary and painful bones as ever Job had.” She prayed for her persecutors: “Open also thou their blind hearts.”¹

On July 16, 1546, she was carried to Smithfield, unable to walk, and chained to the stake. When the apostate Bishop Shaxton preached on the sacrament, she said, “He misseth and speaketh without the Book.” Offered the king’s pardon if she would recant, she replied, “I am not come hither to deny my Lord and Master.” She was burned with three other evangelicals, the last martyrs of Henry’s reign.¹

Cautions

She claimed a divorce from her husband on the ground of 1 Corinthians 7:15, since he had driven her out for her faith. This should be explained carefully if her story is told from the pulpit. Much of the story is told in her own words, which Merle d’Aubigné quotes at length. Hammack spells her husband’s name “Kyrmn”; Merle d’Aubigné gives it as Kyme.³

Catherine Parr   Women of the Reformation