Anne Askew: Life of a Martyr

In this series of blog posts we are showcasing the work from GCSE and A-Level students who have worked with the Citizens Project to research and write blog posts on key moments of protest and reform throughout British history. In this blog post Kasia Macklow-Smith, a pupil at Ibstock Place School, explores the life and legacy of Anne Askew.

Anne Askew was a Protestant martyr and writer, born in Stallingborough, Lincolnshire in 1521. She was very religiously devout, and is most renowned for her fate of being racked and then burnt at the stake for heresy on the 16th July 1546, at the age of 25. However, her gruesome fate often leaves her earlier life in the shadows, and it is one of the most fascinating female lives in late medieval history. Anne was a poet and her ballads are still sung and remembered by Protestants today; she was also one of the first Englishwomen to petition for divorce.

Askew’s story starts when she entered an arranged marriage with Thomas Kyme. Kyme was originally meant to marry her older sister Martha, but when Martha died Askew’s father married her to Thomas anyway in order to save the money he had given as Martha’s dowry. At first Askew was a mild and obedient wife, giving Thomas two children and taking care of her family but things changed when she started to read the English translation of the Bible, which was viewed by Catholics as heretical. This was a precarious time to go against the state sanctioned views on religion. Although Henry VIII had broken with Rome in 1534 and made himself Head of the English Church, he was by no means a Protestant.  Anne was inspired by the teachings she found in the English Bible, especially on the nature of communion and the spreading of God’s word on earth. Her enthusiasm for these beliefs and new interpretations of the Bible meant that she came to the attention of church members in her local community and she encountered hostility:

 

“For my fryndes tolde me, if I ded come to Lyncolne, the prestes wolde assault me and put me to great trouble, as therof they had made their boast”.

 

Portrait of Mrs Thomas Kyme (Anne Askew) by Hans Eworth (1560).

In response to this challenge, Askew travelled to Lincoln and stayed there for six days. While she was reading the Bible in the cathedral, she was approached by some clerics and one of them confronted her about her beliefs. It was this particular episode which angered her religiously orthodox husband, so much so that he “vyolentlye drove her oute of hyse howse”. Following this, Anne petitioned for a divorce. This was incredibly unusual, for a woman to petition for divorce in this period, and further proves that Anne was an extremely determined character for a woman of her time and class. However, her behaviour was one of the main reasons she became a social outcast, and this made it easier for the authorities to persecute her.

 

The ‘heretical’ nature of Anne’s prayers were eventually reported to the authorities. She had tried to hide but a relative betrayed her, and so she was imprisoned under the Six Articles Act on the 10th March 1545. One of the main causes of her arrest was that she had been reading a book by John Frith, a man who was charged for heresy and burnt at the stake in 1533. The authorities claimed that she had controversial beliefs about transubstantiation; Askew did not believe in the doctrine that stated that the bread and wine served in Mass were the Body and the Blood of Christ; instead, she believed that they were only symbols of the sacrament and of Jesus’ sacrifice.

Askew was condemned without a jury and was tortured on the rack. The reason why this particular method of interrogation was so shocking was that, as an educated gentlewoman who had already been condemned, it should not have been permitted. It was Anne’s reluctance to give any information to her captors about her beliefs that led the authorities to decide to inflict this form of torture upon her. Also, she was believed to have knowledge about the potentially heretical beliefs of some of the women at court, including Katherine Parr – the Queen at the time. But she produced no answers for them, despite her constant pain. By the time her execution finally came, she was so helpless and her limbs so weak that she had had to be wheeled to her pyre.

Woodcut of Anne Askew being burnt at Smithfield (1546) from John Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’.

Anne’s work as a female poet has also been widely recognised and her most famous work is arguably ‘The Ballad which Anne Askew Made and Sang When She Was in Newgate’ which reflected on her imprisonment and torture for her heretical beliefs. In the ballad, she calls upon the strength of God to give her courage in her hour of need, but also insists that she won’t give in to torture regardless of whether God decides to give her heavenly strength or not. She also asks the Lord to forgive those who stand against her, saying “let them not taste the hire of their iniquity”. In an insight to her steely resolve not to give in to torture, she describes how she views herself as a warrior at God’s command, wielding her “weapon strong” against injustice, which she views as the whole of “this world”. Throughout the ballad, Anne used her education as an act of defiance against the men who tortured her.

 

Anne is remembered as a martyr by Protestants as well as being a Renaissance writer. She has had ballads written about her as a celebration of her bravery and unwavering faith. Her story has been repeatedly reprinted and represented in the media today: for example, in 2010 her story was woven into Katherine Parr’s in the last season of ‘The Tudors’ on Showtime. It was also an integral part of the plot of the sixth novel of the ‘Shardlake’ series, ‘Lamentation’, which also focused on the ‘heretical’ Protestant beliefs of Queen Katherine and Askew. Anne also had a more immediate impact at the time. She had also believed and written that women were fully in their right to interpret scripture, and should only be punished by men if they actually broke a law, rather than whenever they decided to break out of the conventions of the patriarchy (as she did). The threat of this belief was made clear when almost immediately after her execution, on the 8th  July 1546, a declaration was passed banning all books judged to be heretical, so that no one else could gain these ideas and try to pass them on like Askew had.

It is for her beliefs, character and strength that Askew is remembered. She was a female martyr who died for her beliefs in time of constant political and religious upheaval, and this will hopefully be remembered for the next many centuries to come.

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By Kasia Macklow-Smith. Kasia is currently a 6th Form student studying for her A-levels at Ibstock Place School.