Anne Askew - Racked in the Tower

9 Min Read

Anne Askew was born in Lincolnshire around 1520 or 1521, the second daughter of Sir William Askew, a knight and gentleman who served in Henry VIII’s court. Not much is known of Anne’s early life or education. Her father was knighted by King Henry VIII during the famous meeting between himself and the King of France dubbed the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. Anne’s oldest brother attended the University of Cambridge around the time the fledgling reformist movement led by Thomas Bilney was blossoming at the White Horse Inn. It is more than likely Anne’s brother Francis was influenced by these new teaching and that he brought them home on his visits from the university.

The earliest mention of Anne in the historical record is in the register of marriages which notes her union with Thomas Kyme, the son and heir of a local Lincolnshire gentlemen with extensive property. The Askews and Kymes were neighbours, both parties landed gentry in the Shire which made an alliance between their families not only advantageous but almost inevitable.

Like many northerners the Kymes were staunchly Catholic and seem to have remained so despite the religious upheaval of Henry VIII’s reign. The Askews however had vastly different religious views. Anne’s father, much like Henry VIII vacillated between the old Romanist religion and the new reformist movement as frequently as the king did.

Anne, and her brothers however seem to have been influenced by many of the grassroots reformers like Bilney, Latimer and Cranmer. Their position on religion leaned more toward reformist ideas like righteousness by faith and the role of Scripture as the sole arbiter of truth. It is possible the Askews were in possession of one of Tyndale’s New Testament’s which would have been smuggled into England in the summer of 1526 and was prohibited reading.

Filming on Location in London

Thomas Kyme was originally betrothed to Anne’s older sister Martha, however when Martha Askew died right before the wedding, Anne was forced to take her place. Her father was unwilling to lose a lucrative alliance and most likely the marriage contracts had already been negotiated making it a troublesome business to either alter them or meet the various stipulations that Martha’s death necessitated. It was easier for Sir William to offer Anne in place of her sister to preserve the marriage contracts and the alliance.

Anne is said to have strongly objected to the marriage, perhaps because she realised how strongly Catholic her husband was or perhaps, she simply didn’t like the man. Later reports reveal that neither Thomas nor Anne liked each other, and their marriage was an unhappy one. Sir William would not be deterred by his daughter’s objections and Anne was forced to marry Thomas Kyme. She moved to live on his family estate, eventually giving birth to two children.

When Thomas Kyme discovered that his wife was a protestant, he began to mistreat her, possibly pressuring her to give up her faith in favour of his own. There are reports that he was abusive, that he demanded her recantation. When she refused, he is reported to have violently expelled her from their home.

While the situation surrounding her children is unclear it is safe to assume that her husband most likely denied her access to them on account of her religious beliefs. Thomas’ cruel treatment prompted Anne to seek a legal divorce. She first went to Lincoln, seeking to appear before a court to present her petition of divorce. While she was there, she visited the Lincoln Cathedral every day, where she read from the public Bible available for use at the back of the church.

For six days she is said to have read the Bible aloud for anyone interested, often drawing a large crowd away from the priest who stood at the altar saying the mass. Many of the local clergy disputed with her, verbally abusing her, especially because she was a woman who did not know her place and refused to submit to the will of her husband in matters of conscience. Anne bore the abuse with determination while refusing to yield to the whims of the men who bullied her.

Westminster Abbey, London, England

When her request to petition for divorce in Lincoln was denied Anne set off for London, seeking to obtain a divorce there. In London she was introduced to the growing circle of Protestant gentry and nobility, most likely through her youngest sister who had married a lawyer serving in the household of Katherine Brandon, the Duchess of Suffolk. The Duchess of Suffolk introduced Anne to Queen Katherine Parr who immediately took a liking to her and invited her to preach in her rooms to her ladies in waiting.

By this time Anne was extremely Biblically literate. Not only had she memorised large portions of Scripture, but she was a proficient speaker, deftly able to present arguments in favour of the reformation with clarity and precision. Her ability to teach and preach made her a favourite with the queen and her ladies who had strong protestant leanings. However they worked hard to keep Anne’s presence as discrete as possible since Anne was a known Sacramentarian and King Henry VIII had declared transubstantiation a necessary element to salvation. Sacramentarians were immediately tried and burned for heresy at Smithfield Market.

One of the key issues that arose during the reformation was surrounding transubstantiation. The argument revolved around whether the idea that the bread and wine transformed into the actual body and blood of Jesus after the priest uttered the word hoc est corpus meum was biblical or not.

Most protestants who leaned heavily on Scripture denied this. They were known as Sacramentarians and Anne was one of the most vocal during this period in England. Wycliffe like Anne had been a Sacramentarian yet other contemporary reformers like Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cranmer were as yet undecided.

Unfortunately for Anne and others like her Henry VIII had passed the Act of Six Articles which stated that those who refused to accept transubstantiation, among other sacraments affirmed by the king, would be punished as heretics. To ensure that the Six Articles were enforced a royal commissioner was appointed in every shire tasked with ferreting out violations of the act. The commissioners worked in conjunction with the local bishop or archbishop, wielding complete authority from the king to try accused heretics before a jury of twelve men before proceeding to a final sentence.

The Reformation Was Built on Scripture

Anne was cautious about publicly disclosing her beliefs regarding transubstantiation most likely because of the Six Articles but she didn’t always exercise self-restraint. There were moments, when in the heat of conviction, she admitted to the principles of her faith, especially those that were opposed to the king’s own.

Anne’s convictions were discovered by a spy named Wadloe who rented lodgings near her own accommodations. It is unclear if he was sent to specifically spy on her or if he got wind of her Sacramentarian leanings and proceeded to sniff out her stance. Either way he accused her of heresy to the ecclesiastical authorities.

Unfortunately, Anne had more determined enemies than the nosy Wadloe, namely her infuriated husband who worked with the church authorities in London to have her arrested. Perhaps he wanted to teach her a lesson or jolt her into submission. She was accused of Sacramentarianism upon the testimony of both Wadloe and her husband. She was also accused of saying that she would rather read five lines in the Bible than hear five masses in the chapel. Anne was arrested for heresy and examined by the Bishop of London who focused his examination primarily on her denunciation of transubstantiation.

Her first examination took place on the 5th of March 1545 at Sadler’s Hall in Cheapside. It was an arduous trial, rife with wordplay and a constant game of cat-and-mouse as Anne and the authorities danced around semantics and crossed swords. However, though Anne was determined to parse her words with discretion she was also unafraid to boldly say what needed to be said. During the trial she is reported to have declared “that which you call God is but bread”, a sentence that scandalised and enraged her examiners and more than likely sealed her fate.

When she was asked to recant her views, she refused which led to her imprisonment. She was allowed a maid to whom she most likely dictated a record of her examinations, attempting to preserve and present her side of the story.

This manuscript later made its way to the exiled reformer John Bale who published it posthumously with annotations. While in prison Anne wasn’t allowed any visitors except for a priest who approached her in the hopes of trapping her into recanting. Her cousin Brittayne, a lawyer visited her and tried to act as her advocate with the Bishop of London, but Bishop Bonner only wanted one of two things – a clear confession of guilt or a complete recantation. Anne offered them neither. The examinations continued but thanks to Brittayne’s advocacy and Anne’s quick thinking the bishop found nothing to charge her with and eventually released her.

London, England

Over the following three months she continued to preach and teach especially in the queen’s rooms. It was a dangerous move for both parties but their eagerness to delve into Scripture staved off their fear of discovery. Sadly, Anne’s freedom was short lived. Three months after he first trial in June of 1545 Anne Askew was arrested once more and brought before church authorities.

She appeared before the Privy Council at Greenwich Palace alongside her husband on the 19th of June. While he was dismissed, she was sent to Newgate Prison for heresy. During her stay at Newgate Anne was once more subjected to several more rounds of examination which she recorded faithfully with the help of her maid.

She was tried by the Lord Chancellor of England, Thomas Wriothesely, whose personal agendas coloured his examinations of Anne. By the summer of 1545 King Henry VIII was ailing, there was uncertainty around the throne and his heir, Prince Edward, was a young boy of barely nine years. Edward, unlike his father was strongly protestant, thanks in large part to his stepmother Queen Katherine Parr who ensured that he was educated by some of the leading reformist minds in England at the time.

Wriothesely was part of the leading Catholic faction at court, who watched the growing protestant faction, made up of Edward’s uncles and men who served the king in his privy chamber, with growing alarm. It looked likely that the protestants would gain the upper hand and have tremendous influence in the governing the realm once the king died and Edward acceded to the throne

The Palace of Westminster, London, England

Wriothesley had heard that Anne Askew had been associated with the Queen. His aim, therefore was to coerce her to confess her own heretical beliefs while implicating the queen and any of her ladies in waiting who might share the same views. Wriothesely's aim was to use Anne as a pawn to destroy the Queen of England.

Anne was subjected to long hours of examination, leaving her exhausted. She was brought before Stephen Gardiner, Master Secretary of England, repeatedly questioned by Wriothesely and Richard Rich, one of the king's privy councillors and finally taken to the Tower of London where she was racked by Wriothesley and Rich two of the king’s courtiers. She has the dubious honour of being the first gentlewoman to be racked in the tower, a form of torture usually reserved for men and rarely, if ever, inflicted on women let alone gently born women.

Despite this brutal treatment, Anne refused to recant. She also refused to implicate the queen or her ladies in heresy. Every night after she was taken back to her prison cell, she would record the events of the day. Perhaps she dictated the events to her maid or perhaps Anne herself managed to write. Either way we have a full record of her trials and her final days in prison thanks to her courage and determination.

Recording On Location in London

During her imprisonment her maid often went out to solicit funds for her. Several noble ladies sent her money or other small comforts which helped alleviate her burdens. Eventually, when it became apparent that Anne was unwilling to recant or implicate the queen, she was sentenced to death as a heretic.

On the 16th of July 1546, aged just 25, Anne Askew she was carried in a chair to Smithfield. Here she was burned along with three other men who had similar reformist ideas. The manuscript she had written, chronicling her imprisonment and examinations, found its way to the English reformer John Bale, who was in exile in Antwerp. Bale published the book under the title The Examinations of Anne Askew shortly after her death.

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