1546 Execution of Anne Askew.

1546 July 16th. Anne Askew (née Anne Ayscough, married name Anne Kyme) (born 1520/1521) was an English poet and Protestant who was condemned as a heretic. She is the only woman on record known to have been both tortured in the Tower of London and burnt at the stake.
Execution:She was burnt at the stake at Smithfield, London, aged 26, on July 16th.with John Lascelles and two other Protestants. She was carried to execution in a chair wearing just her shift as she could not walk and every movement caused her severe pain. She was dragged from the chair to the stake which had a small seat attached to it, which she sat astride. Chains were used to bind her body firmly to the stake at the ankles, knees, waist, chest and neck. Because of her recalcitrance she was burned alive slowly rather than being strangled first or burned quickly. Those who saw her execution were im- pressed by her bravery, and reported that she did not scream until the flames reached her chest. The execution lasted about an hour and she was unconscious and probably dead after fifteen minutes or so. Prior to their death, the young martyrs were offered one last chance at pardon. Bishop Shaxton mounted the pulpit and began to preach to them. His words were in vain, however. Anne Askew, in spite of her sufferings, listened attentively throughout his discourse. When he spoke anything she con- sidered to be the truth she audibly expressed agreement, but when he said anything contrary to what she believed Scripture stated, she exclaimed; "There he misseth, and speaketh without the book."

1546 Background: In the last year of Henry VIII's reign,Anne Askew was caught up in a court struggle betwe- en religious traditionalists and reformers. Bishop Stephen Gardiner was telling the king that diplomacy; the prospect of an alliance with the Catholic Emperor Charles V ; required a halt to religious reform. The traditionalist party pursued tactics tried out three years previously,with the arrests of minor evange- licals in the hope that they would implicate those who were more highly placed. In this case measures were taken that were "legally bizarre and clearly desperate". The persons rounded up were in many cases strongly linked to Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, who spent most of the period absent from court in Kent: Anne Askew's brother Edward Ayscough was one of his servants, and Nicholas Shaxton who was brought in to put pressure on Anne Askew to recant was acting as a curate for Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Hadleigh. Others in Cranmer's circle who were arrested were Rowland Taylor and Richard Turner.

The traditionalist party included Sir Thomas Wriothesley (Earl of Southampton) and Richard Rich who racked Anne Askew in the Tower, Edmund Bonner and Thomas Howard (3rd Duke of Norfolk). The intention of her interrogators may have been to implicate the Queen, (m6) Catherine Parr, through the latter's ladies-in-waiting and close friends, who were suspected of having also harboured Protestant beliefs. These ladies included the Queen's sister, Anne Parr, Katherine Willoughby, Anne Stanhope, and Anne Calthorpe. Other targets were Lady Denny and Lady Hertford,wives of evangelicals at court.