Memorials of the Tower of London
De Ros, William Lennox
1866
ANNE ASKEW.
ANNE ASKEW.
THIS young lady was the daughter of Sir W. Askew, of an old Lincolnshire family. She was married early to a Mr. Kyme; but unhappily it was a marriage entirely of interest, and arranged by the two families without any reference to Anne's inclinations, which from the bad character of young Kyme, as well as his religious bigotry, were wholly averse to it. Overruled by her father, she at length reluctantly consented; and though she conducted herself admirably as a wife, and bore to Mr. Kyme two children, his dissipation and neglect prevented anyconjugal happiness between them. Having received a learned education, and being of studious habits, she turned readily from her domestic sorrows to the study of the Bible, now for the first time accessible to the English laity, and became a professed follower of Wickliffe. Her husband, who, without any real principles of religion, was an intolerant Papist, took occasion from this circumstance to cast her off, and expel her from his house, when she betook herself to a residence in London, where she had many friends favourable to the reformed opinions. Queen Katherine Parr herself was among the friends of Mrs. | |
61 | Kyme; and it has been said that Anne was placed in some situation about the Queen's person for a short time. The promulgation of the Six Articles, sometimes called the "Whip with six strings," which the tyrant Henry VIII. had set up as the standard for his subjects' faith, tended to draw closer those friends of Anne Kyme who shared her religious opinions, and who probably foresaw the persecutions which awaited her. There is reason to suppose that her own unworthy husband combined with others to place spies about her in London, who soon found an occasion of denouncing her for expressions which brought her under the general charge of heresy. In March, 1545, she was summoned before an Inquest or Commission at Guildhall, and subjected to a long examination by one Dare, when she displayed an intelligence and shrewdness which, with her modest, gentle demeanour, drew the admiration even of her enemies. Being remanded to the Compter, she was shortly after brought before Bishop Bonner for examination, who exercised all his subtlety to entangle her in her replies; and at length drew out a written summary, in which he had grossly perverted their meaning, and desired her, after hearing it read, to declare whether or not she would subscribe to its contents. Her answer merits to be recorded. "I believe," she said, "as much thereof as is agreeable to the Holy Scriptures; and I desire that this sentence may be added to it." Furious at what he called her obstinate evasions, Bonner was about to proceed to violent extremities, when by the intercession of some powerful friends, and probably for other |
62 | reasons, she was allowed to be released on the bail of her cousin, one Brittayne, who, during the examination, at which he was present, had judiciously entreated the Bishop "not to set her weak woman's wit to his lordship's great wisdom." |
We have no record of the cause, or rather pretext, of her being, about three months afterwards, again arrested. This time her husband, Kyme, was brought up along with her before the Privy Council, sitting at Greenwich. | |
Wriothesley, the Chancellor, now undertook her examination, and chiefly on the great point of Transubstantiation, on which she firmly refused to abandon her own convictions, and was committed to Newgate; from whence she wrote some devotional letters, which show her to have possessed considerable talent. Her next appearance was before the Council, at Guildhall, when, after an examination by a silly Lord Mayor (Martin), in which she entirely foiled him by her simplicity and good sense, she was plainly told, that unless she renounced her errors, and distinctly declared her acquiescence in the Six Articles, she must prepare to die; and, on her firm refusal, she was condemned, without any trial by jury, to be burned as an heretic. Meantime, instead of being sent back to Newgate, she was committed to the Tower, with a view to subject her to the torture of the rack, for which the gloomy seclusion of that fortress afforded greater convenience than the ordinary prison of Newgate, with the hope of inducing her to criminate the Duchess of Suffolk, the Countess of Sussex, the Countess of Hertford, and other ladies, who were supposed to have assisted her | |
63 | with money for her support in prison. She was too high-minded and grateful to betray them; and whatever might have been the case, she declared that she had been chiefly kept from starvation by her faithful maid, who went out and begged for her of the " prentices and others she met in the street." |
The unhappy lady was now carried to a dungeon, and laid on the rack in presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir A. Knyvett, and Wriothesley, the Chancellor, Rich, a creature of Bonner's, and a secretary, sitting at her side, to take down her words. But when she endured the torture without opening her lips in reply to the Chancellor's questions, he became furious, and seizing the wheel himself, strained it with all his force, till Knyvett, revolting at such cruelty, insisted on her release from the dreadful machine. It was but in time to save her life, for she had twice swooned, and her limbs had been so stretched, and her joints so injured, that she was never again able to walk without support. Wriothesley hastened to Westminster to complain to the King of the Lieutenant's lenity; but the latter, getting into his barge with a favourable tide, arrived before him, obtained immediate audience, and told his tale so honestly, and with such earnestness, that Henry's hard heart was softened, and, approving his conduct, he dismissed him with favour: a stronger reason for this may have been that the rack was regarded with such horror by the people as to be applied only in secrecy; and had Anne expired under it, and the fact become known, some violent outbreak might have been apprehended in the | |
64 | City. She was shortly afterwards carried to Smithfield, and there burned to ashes, together with three other persons, for the same cause, in the presence of the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Thomas Wriothesley, the Lord Mayor, and a vast concourse of people. One of the peers, learning that there was some gunpowder about the stakes, became frightened lest any accident should happen to himself, from the faggots being blown into the air; but the Earl of Bedford assuring him that no such chance could occur, and it was only to hasten the deaths of the sufferers, he remained looking on with the same barbarous indifference as the brutal mob, who had assembled to witness the dreadful spectacle. |
