England Condemns Her Faire Gospeller to a Fiery Death

England Condemns Her Faire Gospeller to a Fiery Death

On This Day June 18 1546

Khen Lim

Emma Stanfield as Anne Askew in The Tudors TV series about to be burned alive (Image source: Cinemorgue Wiki)

On July 16 1546, a very tired and near-to-death 26-year-old Anne Askew sat on a wooden chair perched up on a stake. Below her were kindling gathered around and next to her were three other stakes all spaced apart. Her friends, John Lascelles, Nicholas Belenian and John Adams, fellow Protestants were all tied firmly with rope. In a matter of minutes, in the market square of Smithfield, all of them would be burned to their death.

Unlike her friends, she was placed on a chair; from what her torturers had done to her body, there was no way she could even walk let alone stand tied to the stake. Her injuries from the racking had been so horrific that all her limbs were either broken or dislocated. 

In fact she became known as the only woman to be tortured in the Tower of London and the ordeal she went through was torrid enough that the Constable of the Tower, Sir Anthony Kingston (1508-1556) walked out of the room and refused to proceed with the torturing. Yet that didn’t stop the others from continuing.

Like many martyrs of Christ, Anne Askew paid for her faith with her life but in hers was something truly exceptional. For all the days that she was tortured before she was burned to death, Anne did not reveal any names that would have meant serious trouble for her Protestant friends. The pain she suffered was so intense that her screams were heard in the garden next to the White Tower by the Lieutenant’s wife and daughter who were taking a leisurely walk.  

Anne’s story is one of exceptionalism in which she not only dared to question the doctrine of transubstantiation but did it face to face the Lord Mayor of London. When he chided her, saying, “You foolish woman, do you say that the priests cannot make the body of Christ?” she gave back as good as she got: “I say so, my Lord; for I have read that God made man; but that man can make God, I never read nor I suppose, ever shall read.” And with that, she basically sealed her fate. 

To her, however, this was not a game but an affirmation of where her heart was at. Her persistence in light of threats of torture, in answering her opponents arguments were purely done with clear references to Scripture, which she had no worthy competitor in the same room.

Anne’s crime was that she did not hold to the Catholic’s view that the Lord’s Supper was literally the body and blood of Christ and like all Protestants, she believed it to be symbolic.

“But as touching the holy and blessed supper of the Lord, I believe it to be a most necessary remembrance of His glorious sufferings and death. Moreover, I believe as much therein as my eternal and only Redeemer, Jesus Christ, would [that] I should believe. Finally, I believe all those Scriptures to be true [which] He has confirmed with His precious blood,” she said.

By now, she confronted her own beliefs in deference to whatever threats that her opponents forced upon her. In her book entitled, ‘Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII,’ author Karen Lindsey said, “Anne no longer attempted to evade admitting her own beliefs. 

She treated transubstantiation as a joke. Of course, Jesus has said He was the bread of the Eucharist. He had also said He was the door to Salvation – did that mean He was present in any door a priest chose to bless? She was courting martyrdom and on June 18, she was condemned to die at the stake.”

Winding back the twenty-six years, to the year 1520, Anne was born in Lincolnshire to Sir William Askew, a notable landowner who served in the court of King Henry VIII. In fact, her family has interesting ties with the royal court with her brother Edward as the king’s cupbearer and elder brother (Sir) Francis, the sheriff of Lincoln on three occasions. Being well educated, she was no less a noblewoman even at her young age. 

Some historians suggest that when she was young, she was impacted by the Protestant ideas that her brothers brought home from Cambridge where they studied. However, the family was conservative and in light of the 1537 Pilgrimage of Grace, her father was in opposition against the rebels.

Pilgrimage of Grace (maryannbernal.blogspot.com)

The Pilgrimage of Grace began in October 1536 as a popular uprising against King Henry VIII and his decision to sever ties with the Roman Catholic Church as well as the Dissolution of the Monasteries and then too, his chief minister Thomas Cromwell’s (1485-1540) policies among others. 

It was in fact a very serious rebellion, the Yorkshire uprising was “a spontaneous mass protest of the conservative elements in the North of England angry with the religious upheavals instigated by King Henry VIII.” Some believe that it was this event that gave reason to Anne to turn her back on the old Catholic religion because she witnessed the rebels attack her home and seize her brothers.

At roughly the same time, a certain Sir Thomas Kyme (b.1517), a staunch Catholic, was betrothed to Anne’s elder sister, Martha but when she suddenly died, her father forced her hand as a replacement in marrying him. Needless to say, it was hardly a happy marriage made worse so because of religious incompatibilities where Kyme’s traditional Catholic views clashed with Anne’s progressively strong Protestantism. 

Catherine with her husband Charles Brandon in The Tudor TV series (Image source: Pinterest)

She could have spent much of her early married years with her other sister, Jane, whose husband, Sir George Saint Paul (1562-1613) was not only an English politician but an avid Protestant as well and through his friendships with Charles Brandon (1484-1545) who was a brother-in-law to the king, and his wife Catherine (née Willoughby), she was amply exposed to the reformed views.

In around that time, starting from 1538, through Henry VIII’s decree, the English Bible was finally accessible to the common man to read so long as it is in the churches. Therefore those with Protestant persuasion were now able to read for themselves what God said as opposed to what they were told were His words. 

More remarkably, this was the first time that normal people were able to seize the opportunity available to them to carry out Bible readings and then share their evangelical views. Times were a-changing and there was a movement in England away from the Roman Catholic Church and those whose leanings were towards a reformed view plunged heart and soul into it. Anne was most assuredly one of them.

But that only lasted five short years as Henry VIII reneged on his own pledge in 1543. The English Parliament removed William Tyndale’s English version Bible and all public reading of Scripture by laymen from common practice. In the process, he enacted a ruling that would prevent men “below the rank of gentlemen” including all women from being able to access and read the Bible. 

May that be the case, people like Anne were more than charged up to be undeterred. She continued to share her views and preached since by then, she and others had memorised Scripture. As it often was the case, the banishment only made the likes of Anne more fired up to share with those who were deprived of the chance to read God’s Word themselves.

Anne’s fiery devotion and outspoken zeal wasn’t something that her husband, Kyme, could cope with, let alone her refusal to take up his family name. In all her writings, she referred to herself as “Anne Ayscough (or even Aiscough),” which was the more authentic Tudor version of what is now widely known as ‘Askew.’ No matter what, she never identified herself as ‘Anne Kyme.’

Anne’s substantial interests in theological studies had by now begun to surface. Although access to the Bible was eventually revoked for women, she had by then affirmed her belief in Protestantism and after much diligent study of the Word through her many hours of reading Scripture, she embraced the principles of Reformation and devoted herself completely to it. 

The expanse of not just her biblical knowledge but of the law was well evident in her writings and in it, her wit, intellect and courage were also very obvious. These, she showed her tremendous hand in her subsequent interrogations that were to come towards the end of her life.

Seen to be completely at odds with his staunch Catholicism, the cracks on the wall soon forced the marriage to collapse. With advice from his local clerics, Kyme evicted her from their family home even though he accepted the fact that she was without a doubt, the “most devout woman he’d come to know.”

Though records show she had two children through the marriage, there are no information concerning what ever happened to them in the process. The Dictionary of National Biography merely says that Anne had left her children to go ‘gospelling’ but more about this a little later.

Following her eviction, she went to live with her brother Francis. In fact, Kyme’s forced separation opened a convenient way for Anne to finally seek divorce from what was, all this while, an unhappy marriage that was forced on her against her will. Citing “unequal yoke” would be, in her mind, an incontestable reason and a firm basis for the divorce to be validated. Like Henry VIII who found divorce tough enough to engineer, Anne had felt the same too. Unlike him, she hardly had the national stature to make things happen her way.

Catherine Parr as portrayed by Joely Richardson in The Tudor TV series (Image source: Pinterest)

After her local court threw her petition out, she left for London where she believed a divorce would be easier to obtain possibly because she felt the king would empathise and understand her situation. Like Henry’s new wife, Catherine Parr (1512-1548), Anne admired the king’s desire to liberate his subjects from “the evil of popery” and therefore she was sure that he would pave the way for her to be freed from her own unbelieving husband and her unhappy marriage.

Anne’s time in London was a significant turning point. Though divorce was hard to come by, it became a larger problem for her than she’d realised. In the meantime, it was in this city that she caught up with an old friend, John Lascelles who then introduced her to other high-profile Protestants like Huge Latimer the Bishop of Worcester (1487-1555), Nicholas Shaxton the Bishop of Salisbury (1485-1556) and then Dr Edward Crome (d.1562). These were very notable who’s who in England because of their connection to the new Queen of England whose Protestant leaning was becoming evident.

In their company, Anne not just flourished; her faith in Christ blossomed along with the electric climate of reform that she sensed in London and with friends like these, she was happier than she ever had been. Soon, she emerged as London’s most promising and beloved gospellers and with her evident beauty and intelligence, Anne was widely known as the ‘Faire Gospeller.’

A gospeller was someone who knew large parts of Scripture by heart and was able to preach about them. At that time in the city of London, Bible study groups were everywhere and they were filled with people of all walks of life; from the nobility to the commoner, from the high to the low, men and women; all who revered God’s Word were welcomed and attend, they frequently did with a great heart for Christ. 

Even the ban that came back into effect on Bible reading did not deter such people but instead, it fuelled their zeal for God’s Word and those who knew Scripture so comprehensively well like Anne, became ‘gospellers’ and spelled a new era and breed of lay preachers in this country.

Of all of London’s gospellers, Anne was possibly its most famous. It wasn’t just the power of her conviction but the passion in which she delivered her knowledge of God’s Word. As she found her home in London, Londoners found in her a young gentlewoman who felt equally at home sharing Scripture with the wealthy and the poor as well as the educated and the uneducated.

But not all of London was smitten with someone like Anne. In a toxic religiously antagonised climate created by Henry VIII’s attempt to annul his marriage to his wife, Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), it was now a case of traditionalist Catholics against what they see as their deadly enemy, the reformed Protestants. To those who embraced the traditional Roman Catholic Church, every Protestant was a heretic. It was only a matter of time that they would flush all of them out. And burn them.

Bishop Stephen Gardiner played by Simon Ward in The Tudors TV series (Image source: The Tudors Wiki)

With Anne becoming a very public and much celebrated figure, she was obviously making enemies with someone like Bishop Stephen Gardiner (1483-1555) who later became Henry’s eldest daughter’s Lord Chancellor during her reign as Mary I. For him, it was the new queen, Catherine Parr, whom he was aiming to cut down to size. He needed some thing or someone to discredit her. 

And someone like Anne could fit the bill if only he knew of her connections. Unbeknownst to him, Anne wasn’t just an outspoken heretic who was turning London upside down but she was also friendly with the Duchess of Suffolk, Catherine Brandon (1519-1580), whom she’d met in her early days in London. And the Duchess was, of course, a good friend of the new queen.

1546 being the last year of Henry VIII’s reign (he died January the following year), Anne was right in the middle of a religious crisis that was clearly spiralling out of control. Mixed in a crowd looking for reform and being so well embraced, it’s possible that Anne wasn’t aware because within the royal courts, the struggle between the traditionalists and the reformers was as real as it was deadly. 

And Gardiner was within its epicentre. For three years up until then, the traditionalists’ strategy was to round up minor evangelicals and threaten them enough for them to sing. The idea was that they would inevitably spill the beans and lead authorities to those higher up the rank.

This resulted in some “legally bizarre and clearly desperate” actions but it did lead to some notable people who were brought in for questioning including Anne’s own brother, Edward who was one of the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer’s servants. Nicholas Shaxton, a curate for Cranmer, was also rounded up to pressure Edward to renounce his Protestant faith. 

And then there were also Rowland Taylor (1510-1555) and Richard Turner (d.1565). Although both were unharmed, Taylor was eventually arrested during Mary I’s reign in 1553 and two years later, was burned at the stake. Turner was more fortunate as he managed to go into exile at that time.

Thomas Wriothesley played by Frank McCusker in The Tudors TV series (Image source: The Tudors Wiki)

Gardiner’s council of traditionalists were a fearsome lot. There were the unscrupulous conniving Sir Thomas Wriothesley (1505-1550) and renowned torturer and morally inept Sir Richard Rich (1496-1567), both of whom were widely known to have turned the wheels of the rack in the eventual torture of Anne. 

Together with Edmund Bonner (c.1500-1569) and Thomas Howard the Third Duke of Norfolk (1473-1554), they went about cracking down on Protestant sympathisers and those who held favourable opinions that brought disrepute to the Catholic faith. They also went about threatening the lives of reformers such as Miles Coverdale and Hugh Latimer. In fact, they were determined to flush out every single Protestant that they suspected within the confines of the royal household to the extent that they even intimidated Cranmer.

But their single biggest agenda was to find incontrovertible evidence to bring down the queen. That was, after all, the strong suspicion of the Catholic faction that Queen Catherine (Parr) had influence over the royal children with her heresy. However, because it was too difficult to implicate her directly, they decided to work through the queen’s ladies-in-waiting and those close friends who shared the same Protestant opinions. 

They included the queen’s younger sister, Anne Herbert (née Parr, 1515-1552), Duchess of Suffolk, Catherine Brandon (née Willoughby, 1519-1580), Duchess of Somerset and reformist sister-in-law to Henry VIII’s third wife, Anne Seymour (née Stanhope, 1510-1587) and Countess of Sussex, Anne Calthorpe (c.1505-1582) and possibly also the queen’s lady-in-waiting Lady Joan Champernowne (née Denny, c.1505-553) whose husband was also an evangelical at court.

A prisoner cell in the Tower of London said to be the type Anne Askew was incarcerated in (Image source: Pinterest)

Anne suffered through two interrogations before her execution. Her first was in March 1545 when the aldermen of London arraigned her under the charge of the Six Articles Act, which meant she had to appear before a heresy hearing commission. There she stood trial, cross-examined by the chancellor of the Bishop of London, Bonner himself who was of course part of Gardiner’s mob. 

Following the inquest, Anne was imprisoned for twelve days before her cousin Brittayn was able to visit and bail her out but during her brief incarceration, she was pressed for a confession to which she gave the authorities no pleasure.

From June of the same year to early 1546, Anne had again run foul with the law but none of these were of much significance because authorities could not find enough incriminating evidence to pin on her. The turning point, however, was when she applied unsuccessfully for divorce. 

In dismissing the case, the court compelled her to return home but her refusal to comply was probably what brought her to Gardiner’s attention and in his curiosity to dig more into the matter, the Bishop had her re-arrested in March 1546 just so he could examine her more closely.

Although she was, again, released, he forced her back to London three months later in June where he not only ordered her repatriation to her husband but more importantly, questioned her on the state of her faith. 

Richard Rich played by Rod Hallett in The Tudors TV series (Image source: Tudors Wiki)

This time, she was subjected to two five-hour-long periods of interrogation by Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, Solicitor-General Rich Gardiner as well as the Bishop of Winchester, John Dudley (1504-1553) and also the king’s principal secretary, Sir William Paget (1506-1563). All of them took turns to pressure Anne into confession with threats of execution. 

Their objective had long been the same – to force names out of her, names of important Protestant sympathisers that could possibly be running the gamut within the royal courts.

When they finally failed, she was taken for torturing, with the ultimate hope, this time, that she would name Queen Catherine as the practising Protestant; in other words, a heretic whose hands have been in the lives of Henry’s children. 

From her prison cell in the Tower of London, she was hauled off at around ten in the morning to a lower chamber in the White Tower. There, she was shown the ominous rack and then asked, once again, if she would utter the names of those who shared in her Protestant faith. And once more, she refused to comply.

This time, Anne was asked to undress down to her shift (what we call a chemise or modern-day underwear) before getting on to the rack where her wrists and ankles were then tied down. And again, her torturers asked her the same question. She chose to be silent. 

Woodcut of heretic tortured on the rack in the Tower of London (Image source: Spartacus Educational)

At this point in time, the wheel of the rack began to turn for the first time and she was stretched so much so that her whole body was held tightly arched about five inches off the bed. According to her own writings, the pain was so excruciating that she fainted, after which they lowered her body and revived her.

They repeated the torture on Anne twice more until the Constable of the Tower of London, Sir Anthony Kingston, had enough of it, walked out of the room, leaving for the soonest possible meeting with the king where he sought to pardon himself from having to torture her any further and to inform him of the unspeakable cruelty. 

For Kingston, seeing Anne – or any woman for that matter – in such writhing inhuman pain was too much. The king acquiesced but that didn’t stop Wriothesley and Rich from continuing to torture her themselves. 

In fact, unlike Kingston, Wriothesley and Rich set no limit to themselves as to how much pain their victim could endure. They turned the handles so hard that Anne’s joints popped from their sockets. The forced dislocation meant that her shoulder, hip, elbows and knees were of no use to her anymore. The excruciating pain would have to be unimaginable. No human should have to go through something this torturous. 

Yet for all the unthinkable agony that Anne was forced to undergo, she mentioned no names. However her shrieks had reached the garden next to the White Tower where Kingston’s wife and daughter were taking a walk. The Lieutenant, probably no longer able to withstand the inhumanity of the torture, ordered that Anne be returned to her prison cell.

Anne Askew's remembrance in the Tower of London (Image source: Flickriver)

On this day four-hundred and seventy-one years ago in 1546, Anne was found guilty of heresy. The authorities might as well just throw the book at her now, since they no longer found her useful. After all the torture they subjected her to, they still could not extract any useful information from her and therefore, through the condemnation of heresy, they ordered that she be executed in Smithfield in broad daylight alongside other fellow Protestants. There, she would be burned alive at the stake, watched by a gathered public that is, until or unless she finally recanted. Her last day on Earth would be a month from then.

The consistency of Anne’s resoluteness is beyond human comprehension. Through all the pain that she suffered on the rack, most normal human beings would have conceded. Many, when seeing the instrument, felt it enough to spill the beans and not wanting to go through the torture. 

But not Anne. She availed herself to the torture – not gleefully of course – and emerged even more powerful in her compelling show of resilience. Had she named any names, the most sought-after of them all would have to be none other than the queen herself.

Queen Catherine Parr, Henry’s sixth, was a remarkably gentle, considerate and thoughtful woman. It was Catherine who got her off the first time she was arrested. That was not too difficult for someone like her to intercede but once Anne became even more persistent and fiery in her beliefs, her subsequent rearrests became too dangerous. By then, Catherine’s enemies were out baying for her blood. It’s only fortunate that she outlived Henry thus ensuring her survival.

Anne Askew being carried to the stake in The Tudors TV series (Image source: tvfanatic.com)

On July 16 in the year 1546, four people were escorted to the stakes at Smithfield – Anne herself and her friends and fellow Protestants, John Lascelles, Nicholas Belenian and John Adams. While the others could, Anne’s multiple injuries meant she failed to walk on her own and so she was carried in a chair all the way to the stake by the guards of the Tower, wearing just her shift. 

Even so, every physical movement in the slightest would cause intense pain to shoot through her body. Through the journey to Smithfield, her screams would have been terrifying to hear.

When she arrived in Smithfield, the guards dragged her off the chair and to the stake. There, she was sat astride on a small wooden seat in order that she could be held up and supported. She was then chained around her ankles, knees, waist, chest and neck. 

Anne Askew perched on a chair at her stake in The Tudors TV series (Image source: Spartacus Educational)

All of these were completely redundant for a woman who had no further use of her physical body since all her joints had been comprehensively dislocated. But still, the authorities probably wanted to make a gory example out of Anne. Her recalcitrance was more than enough of a reason to have her burned alive slowly instead of the usual prior strangulation before being set on fire.

All four were set apart but were visible of one another since they were in the same area. The crowd was huge and had to be pushed back in order that the fire could consume only the four. At the very last minute, Anne was given her final chance to renounce her faith but still, she refused for all of them and in the same tone, the other three echoed agreeably. 

Lindsey writes, saying, “As the faggots were piled high about them, Wriothesley made his way through the throng to offer the four a pardon if they recanted. Anne spoke for them all, crying aloud that she ‘came not hither to deny my Lord and Master!’”

Scene from The Tudors showing Anne Askew being burned at the stake (Image source: thetudorswiki.com)

Lindsey went on to say, “The torch was lit and the four died quickly thanks to gunpowder a friend had thrown into the flames.” Mention of gunpowder was common among even early historians. James Gairdner (1828-1912) said that after Wriothesley and the Dukes of Norfolk and Bedford as well as the lord mayor and others were seated at the bench under St Bartholomew’s Church, following Dr Shaxton’s sermon, some members of the public became agitated and uncomfortable because they noticed some gunpowder was too close for comfort.

“The titled spectators on the bench were more discomposed, knowing that there was some gunpowder near the faggots, which they feared might send them flying about their ears. But the Earl of Bedford reassured them. The gunpowder was not under the faggots but laid about the bodies of the victims to rid them the sooner of their pain,” Gairdner wrote.

In the BBC series ‘The Tudors,’ one of the episodes relate how Lady Stanhope (née Seymour) had arranged for a pouch of gunpowder to be sown on to Anne’s shift as an ‘act of kindness’ so that rather than linger in sufferance of a long horrible death, she would die a quick death. This was clearly also proof of the close friendship between the two. 

In another account, the gunpowder was said to be tied around her neck. Famous martyrologist John Foxe confirmed in his book that indeed gunpowder was present to “rid them of their pain,” which is not only further validation that it was used but that it was not just for Anne but also for the other three. In yet another account, gunpowder was ‘poured’ over her body but by who, nobody was certain.

Despite all these accounts, it was also said that the execution had gone on for about an hour and that Anne was actually unconscious but remained alive for fifteen minutes. So rather than the quick death that gunpowder would have brought on, this couldn’t have been the case. Had there been gunpowder used, there would have had been a sudden explosion once the flames reached the sack of gunpowder on her body. Furthermore, the execution couldn’t then have lasted for the hour mentioned.

Anne Askew and three others in Smithfield for their execution (Image source: Ex-Classics)

After Anne had drawn her last breath, the sky broke into a thunderstorm. Eighteenth-century ecclesiastical historian John Strype (1643-1737) recalls it to be “the voice of God, or the voice of an angel.” Lindsey said, “a fortuitous thunderstorm, breaking out suddenly, added to the legend that grew to surround the death of the Fair Gospeller.” 

Bishop John Bale (1495-1563) wrote, saying, “Credibly am I informed by various Dutch merchants who were present there, that in the time of their sufferings, the sky, and abhorring so wicked an act, suddenly altered colour, and the clouds from above gave a thunder clap, not unlike the one written in Psalm 76. The elements both declared wherein the high displeasure of God for so tyrannous a murder of innocents.”

As the public looked on, most were in awe of Anne’s bravery. It was recorded that she neither cried out nor scream in pain that was, until the flames began to lick at her chest. 

Foxe wrote, “And thus the good Anne Askew, with these blessed martyrs being troubled so many manner of ways and having passed through so many torments, having now ended the long course of her agonies, being compassed in with flames of fire, as a blessed sacrifice unto God, she slept in the Lord A.D. 1546, leaving behind her a singular example of Christian constancy for all men to follow.”

Even as Anne neared certain death, there was still the one final chance to walk away. Lesser men would have recanted just like Bishop Shaxton who was now ironically the one who not only preached at the pulpit to her and the three others but was also offering her one last chance at pardon. His attempt was futile though Anne did listen attentively at his sermon, agreeing when he said the truth but exclaiming, “There he misseth and speaketh without the book” when he strayed from the truth of Scripture.

Emma Stanfield as Anne Askew in The Tudors TV series (Image source: theanneboleynfiles.com)

Today, in 1546, Anne was burned alive by the order of King Henry VIII but her death was not in vain. Foxe included her in his book of martyrs while many Baptist history records consider her as their forerunner. Anne’s heroic stand was as incredible considering that she was only 25 years of age. 

Just as she led an amazing life testifying for God, she died with that same courage and faith that so many had known her for. Despite having been so unjustifiably and cruelly treated in the Tower of London, Anne remained true to Christ and loyal to her friends whose lives were saved by her refusal to reveal to her tormentors. And in that, she continues till this day to be a person many around the world admire.

Further sources for reading:

-     Bainton, Roland H. (Jan 1973) Women of the Reformation: In France and England (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Women-Reformation-England-Roland-Bainton/dp/0800662474

-     Beilin, Elaine V. (Jan 1996) The Examinations of Anne Askew (Women Writers in English 1350-1850) (New York: Oxford University Press). Available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Examinations-Askew-Writers-English-1350-1850/dp/0195108493

-     Cattley, Stephen Reed, ed. (Aug 2011) The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe: With A Preliminary Dissertation By the Rev. George Townsend, Volume 5 (Charleston, SC: Nabu Press). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Acts-Monuments-John-Foxe-Dissertation/dp/1175009431

-     Christmas, Rev. Henry (1849) Select Works of John Bale… Containing the Examinations of Lord Cobham, William Thorpe and Anne Askew and The Image of Both Churches. Edited for the Parker Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Available at https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008591077

-     Cross, Claire (2013) Participants in the Pilgrimage of Grace (act. 1536-1537) in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online Edition. Subscription required to access online. To login, http://ezproxy.lib.le.ac.uk/login?url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/subscribed

-     Deen, Edith (1959) Great Women of the Christian Faith (New York: Harper, First Edition). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Great-women-Christian-faith-Edith/dp/B0006AW47Q

-     Foxe, John () Book of Martyrs. Accessible online at http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/johnfoxe/index.html

-     Freeman, Thomas S. and Wall, Sarah Elizabeth (2001) Racking the Body, Shaping the Text: The Account of Anne Askew in Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ in Renaissance Quarterly Vol. 54 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Accessible online at http://gracewood0.tripod.com/foxefreeman.html

-     Gairdner, James (1885) ‘Askew, Anne (1521-1546)’ in Stephen, Leslie () Dictionary of National Biography 1885-1900 Volume 02 (London: Smith, Elder & Co.). Also in Jokinen, Anniina, ed. (Jul 2010) Luminarium Encyclopaedia website. Accessible online at http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/askew.htm. Also available at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Askew,_Anne_(DNB00)  

-     Hickerson, Megan L. (Apr 2006) Ways of Lying: Anne Askew and the Examinations in Gender & History 18 Nr. 1 (Wiley Online Library). Accessible online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0424.2006.00414.x/abstract

-     Ives, Eric (Jul 2005) The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn: ‘The Most Happy’ (Carlton, VIC: Blackwell Publishing, New Edition). Available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Death-Anne-Boleyn-Happy/dp/1405134631

-     Lindsey, Karen (May 1996) Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII (Boston, MA: Da Capo Press). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Divorced-Beheaded-Survived-Feminist-Reinterpretation/dp/0201408236

-     Loades, David, ed. (Jun 2003) Reader’s Guide to British History (Reader’s Guides) (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Readers-Guide-British-History-Guides/dp/1579582427

-     MacCulloch, Diarmaid (Feb 1998) Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, Fourth Print Edition). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-Life-Diarmaid-MacCulloch/dp/0300074484

-     Merle D’Aubigné, Jean Henri (Jun 1997) The Reformation in England – Volume 1 (Edinburgh, Scotland: Banner of Truth Trust). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Reformation-England-J-H-Merle-dAubigne/dp/0851514863

-     Parsons, Robert (Mar 2012) A Treatise of Three Conversions of England from Paganisme to Christian Religion, Volume 2; Divided in 3 Partes (RareBooksClub.com). Available at https://www.amazon.com/treatise-conversions-paganisme-Christian-religion/dp/113017719X

Note: Because this copy may lack certain typos and texts, a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) can be downloaded from the publisher by the purchaser).

-     Porter, Linda (Mar 2011) Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr (London: Pan Books, Reprinted Edition). Available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Katherine-Queen-Linda-Porter/0330460803

-     Ridgway, Claire (Jun 2010) Anne Askew Sentenced to Death in The Anne Boleyn Files website. Accessible online at https://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/anne-askew-sentenced-to-death/

-     Tracy, Stephanie (Jul 2012) The Burning of Anne Askew in The Tudor Enthusiast website. Accessible online at http://thetudorenthusiast.weebly.com/my-tudor-blog/the-burning-of-anne-askew.

-     Watt, Diane (Nov 1997) Secretaries of God – Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Library of Medieval Women) (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, New Edition). Available at http://www.amazon.in/Secretaries-God-Prophets-Medieval-England/dp/0859916146

-     Weir, Alison (Jan 1991) The Six Wives of Henry VIII (New York: Grove Press, First Grove Press Paperback Edition). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Six-Wives-Henry-VIII/dp/0802136834  

-     Zahl, Paul F. M. (Jun 2001) Five Women of the English Reformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Five-Women-English-Reformation-Paul/dp/0802830455