Anne Askew

English writer and martyr

• Born: 1521
• Birthplace: Lincolnshire, England
• Died: July 16, 1546
• Place of death: Smithfield, London, England

Askew documented her experiences as a Protestant accused of heresy in England, writing about the court proceedings, interrogations, and torture that led to her execution. Her Examinations are singular, for no other female martyr of the Henrician or Marian periods in Tudor England recorded her own trial and torture.

Early Life

Anne Askew, born into a wealthy Lincolnshire family, was the daughter of Elizabeth Wrottesley and Sir William Askew. Her father, knighted by Henry VIII in 1513, served as a courtier, the high sheriff of Lincolnshire and a member of Parliament. Though the breadth of her education is unknown, Askew’s extensive knowledge of Scripture and striking aptitude for oratory suggest she received some academic instruction.

Askew was compelled by her father to marry Thomas Kyme of Friskney, the fiancé of her late sister Martha, by whom she had two children. Askew’s Protestantism, however, troubled her Catholic husband, who forced her from their home after she slighted local priests. Askew sought to divorce her unreformed spouse. Unable to persuade John Longland, the bishop of Lincoln, to grant her a divorce, Askew probably appealed to the Court of Chancery in London, where her petition was apparently denied.

Life’s Work

On her arrival in London, Askew became involved with Protestant reformers associated with Catherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII. Though Henry VIII had broken with the Roman Catholic Church and formed the Church of England in 1534 to secure a divorce from his first wife, he remained a practicing Catholic until his death. During his reign, reformers were viewed with suspicion and sanctioned for violating the Act of Six Articles (1539), which encoded Catholic doctrine. Suspected of denying Christ’s real presence in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, Askew was repeatedly arrested for heresy under the first of the six articles.

While imprisoned at Newgate and the Tower of London in March, 1545, and June, 1546, Askew found herself relentlessly interrogated about her beliefs. During her final imprisonment, she was illegally tortured on the rack when she refused to implicate others who shared her faith, particularly those noblewomen in Catherine Parr’s circle. Angered at her silence, Thomas Wriothesley, the lord chancellor, and Sir Richard Rich, a chancery officer and future lord chancellor, racked Askew with their bare hands. Askew was condemned to death on June 28, 1546. On July 16, 1546, she was brought to Smithfield for her execution, carried because her tortured, broken body prevented her from walking. Askew refused a final opportunity to recant and to receive the king’s pardon, and was burned at the stake in the company of three fellow reformers.

Askew composed a detailed account of her two interrogations, The First Examinacyon of Anne Askewe (1546) and The Lattre Examinacyon of Anne Askewe (1547), better known collectively as Examinations . Protestant reformers often recorded the substance of their interrogations to reveal their ability to challenge, with divine aid, the orthodox doctrine of their Catholic inquisitors. Askew, unlike male reformers subjected to questioning, had to defend herself not only as an accused heretic but also as a woman. Her interrogators asserted that she, as a woman, should neither defy ecclesiastical authority nor openly discuss Scripture, an activity prohibited by the Act for Advancement of True Religion (1543).

Despite the restrictions placed on Renaissance women, Askew found within herself a source of authority. Her Examinations reveal her confidence in her ability to read, interpret, and expound Scriptures without the assistance of church officials. She thereby dodged the authority of the priests whom she rejected as mediators between herself and God. Throughout her Examinations, Askew confidently cites Scripture to support her doctrinal claims and to condemn the beliefs and conduct of her accusers. When she wishes to remain silent on a subject, however, she reminds her questioners, with understated irony, that “it was against St. Paul’s learning, that . . . a woman, should interpret the scriptures, specially where so many wise learned men were.”

Askew’s confidence in her being an agent of spiritual truth is transparent in the lines of a ballad she wrote during her imprisonment, the last words in Examinations: “The Ballad Which Anne Askew Made and Sang When She Was in Newgate.” In this ballad, Askew assumed, through simile, a masculine military identity. She was an “armed knight appointed to the field” and as such, was free to offer a critique of the unjust power structure that imprisons innocent followers of Christ. Askew self-assuredly engaged in a battle with the world, shielded only by her reformed faith, and concluded with a prayer of forgiveness for her enemies.

Askew’s Examinations and Newgate ballad were published in 1546 and 1547 by the playwright and Protestant propagandist John Bale, later bishop of Ossory. Bale claimed to have access to Askew’s handwritten account of her examinations, although no original manuscript is extant. Bale has been criticized for his copious, invasive commentary, which reshapes and disrupts Askew’s narrative to advance his religious ideals. Nevertheless, by locating Askew within the broader narrative of Protestant history, he also helps present a Renaissance woman’s authoritative public voice. The historian John Foxe later included Askew’s Examinations, without Bale’s commentary, in his martyrology Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perillous Dayes (1563; better known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs ). Though his subtler editorial intervention has been seen as less troubling, Foxe also manipulated her text to produce an unblemished Protestant martyr. Therefore, Askew’s autobiographical voice her textual identity has been shaped by her male editors, and it remains, as she wished, partially hidden from view.

Significance

The Examinations and ballad of Askew stand as a testimony to the significant role played by women in the transition from Catholicism to Protestantism in Renaissance England. Traditionally called to silence and obedience, women during this time period were granted a degree of spiritual agency and authority by the reformed religion, which championed the priesthood of all believers, regardless of gender.

Askew’s writings are one of the earliest extant examples of an Englishwoman’s vocal opposition to ecclesiastical and civic authority. The Examinations, as edited by John Bale and John Foxe, endorse the female adoption of the traditionally masculine role of scriptural interpreter and guide and also reestablish women as active agents in religious history.

Bibliography

Beilin, Elaine V. Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987. A seminal work on Askew as a figure of female political resistance in Renaissance England

Beilin, Elaine V., ed. The Examinations of Anne Askew. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. The introduction to this critical edition offers another review of Askew’s biography.

Betteridge, Thomas. “Anne Askew, John Bale, and Protestant History.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27, no. 2 (Spring, 1997): 265-284. An examination of the expression of modern subjectivity in Askew’s writings, partially undermined by the attempt of Renaissance editors to reduce Askew to a martyr in Protestant history.

Coles, Kimberly Anne. “The Death of the Author (And the Appropriation of Her Text): The Case of Anne Askew’s Examinations.” Modern Philology 99, no. 4 (2002): 515-539. A comparison of the editorial practices of John Bale and John Foxe.

Coles, Kimberly Anne. “Reproductive Rites: Anne Askew and the Female Body as Witness in the Acts and Monuments.” In Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, edited by Liz Herbert McAvoy and Teresa Walters. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002. An analysis of Askew’s interior self-fashioning and denial of bodily experience, and her “re-embodiment” in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perillous Dayes).

Kemp, Theresa D. “Translating (Anne) Askew: The Textual Remains of a Sixteenth-Century Heretic and Saint.” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 4 (Winter, 1999): 1021-1045. An examination of Askew’s textual body as a site on which Henrician conservatives and Protestant reformists dispute religion and politics.

Kesselring, Krista. “Representations of Women in Tudor Historiography: John Bale and the Rhetoric of Exemplarity.” Renaissance and Reformation 22, no. 2 (1998): 41-61. A defense of Bale’s editions of the Examinations, which render Askew a public exemplary agent worthy of imitation.

Mazzola, Elizabeth. “Expert Witnesses and Secret Subjects: Anne Askew’s Examinations and Renaissance Self-Incrimination.” In Political Rhetoric, Power, and Renaissance Women, edited by Carol Levin and Patricia A. Sullivan. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. A psychoanalytic (Freudian) reading of Askew’s Examinations, which explores Askew’s identity as a subject of secret knowledge.

Travitsky, Betty, ed. The Paradise of Women: Writings by Englishwomen of the Renaissance. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981. A collection of noteworthy excerpts from Askew’s works, accompanied by a detailed analysis of Askew’s strategies of resistance.