Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/305

A.D. 1546.] Lady Jane Grey; and another lovely and noble victim, Anne Askew, whose turn it was to fall under the destroying hand of Henry VIII. at this moment, was highly esteemed and encouraged by her. Anne Askew was the second daughter of Sir William Askew, of Kelsey, in Lincolnshire. She was married at an early age, and, as it is said, against her will, to a Mr. Kyme, a wealthy neighbour, who had been engaged to her elder sister, but was prevented marrying her by her early death. After having two children by Kyme, she left him, or, as other accounts have it, was driven out of his house by him, on account of her Protestant opinions, went to London, resumed her maiden name, and devoted herself zealously to the diffusion of the Scripture doctrines. She soon became acquainted with the most distinguished ladies of the Court. Lady Herbert, the queen's sister, the Duchess of Suffolk, and other ladies, were greatly interested in her. She had given books to the queen in the presence of Lady Herbert, Lady Tyrwhitt, and the youthful Lady Jane Grey. These circumstances marked her out to Gardiner and Bonner as just the person to implicate the queen, if they laid hands on her.

Anne Askew was, therefore, soon summoned before Bonner, Bishop of London, who terrified her into a recantation, and an acknowledgment of her faith in the doctrines of the Romish Church; but no sooner was she discharged than, despising herself for her weakness, she resumed her exertions for the spread of Protestant ideas, and spoke boldly against transubstantiation and other Popish dogmas. This soon brought her into custody again. She was examined before the Privy Council, when she defended herself so stoutly, and quoted Scripture so ably, that they committed her to Newgate, and soon after, she and some others were sentenced to death at Guildhall.

Whilst lying under sentence of death, they sent Shaxton, formerly Bishop of Salisbury, to her, to persuade her to renounce her faith and save her life. Shaxton, who had manfully resisted the passing of the Six Articles, called the "Bloody Statute," and had resigned his see on their being passed, had endured many years' imprisonment, and at length was condemned to the flames. This reduced his courage—probably his spirit being enfeebled by long confinement and suffering—and he recanted. But his arguments, and far less his example, could not influence Anne. She told him to spare his labour, and that it had been better for him if he had never been born. Finding this attempt useless, her tormentors removed her to the Tower, and there she was questioned by Gardiner and Wriothesley as to her connection with the ladies of the Court. She refused to implicate them. They then told her that the king was aware of her intercourse with several of the Court ladies, and she had better confess; adding, that if she had not powerful friends, how had she lived in prison? She replied that her maid had lamented her case to the apprentices in the streets, and they had sent her money. She had also received money in the name of ladies of the Court, but she had no means of learning whether it really came from them.

They then put her to the torture, and when Sir Anthony Knevet, the Lieutenant of the Tower, endeavoured to check the ferocious cruelty of Wriothesley, that base man, and the equally base Rich, threw off their coats. and applied their hands to the rack, till, as Anne herself declared, they well-nigh plucked her joints asunder.

When Sir Anthony Knevet saw this infernal work going on, he got into his boat, and hastened to inform the king of the shameful scene he had just witnessed. Henry pretended to be incensed at it; but so far from taking any steps to prevent this dastardly treatment of a noble and beautiful young woman, he is asserted, on contemporary authority, to have ordered the racking himself, in punishment of her bringing heretical books amongst the ladies of his Court.

Whilst Anne Askew's dislocated frame was one universal agony, and totally disabled, she was carried to the flames in Smithfield. With her were burnt John Lascelles, a gentleman of a good family of Nottinghamshire, and belonging to the Royal household; Nicholas Belenian, a Shropshire clergyman; and John Adams, a poor tailor of London. Shaxton, the fallen ex-Bishop of Salisbury, preached a sermon on the occasion, and Wriothesley, John Russell, and others of the council, came to witness the execution, and offered Anne the king's pardon if she would recant. She treated their proposals with scorn, and bore, says a spectator, "an angel's countenance, and a smiling face."

Sir George Blagge, and a lady named Joan Bouchier, were also condemned to die. But Joan Bouchier escaped till the next reign; and Blagge, who was a great favourite of the king, and called by him, in his jocose moments, his pig, was rescued by Henry learning his situation in time, and sending an angry message to Wriothesley for his release. On Blagge hastening into the king's presence to thank him, Henry exclaimed, "Ah! my pig! are you here safe again!'" "Yes, sire," replied Blagge; "but if your majesty had not been better than your bishops, your pig had been roasted ere this time." Poor Anne Askew, not being able to act the pig, perished; and the sanguinary ministers of this sanguinary monarch now looked closer to the king's person for a fresh victim. "Gardiner," says a contemporary, "had bent his bow to bring down some of the head deer."

Around the dreaded tyrant the silence of terror reigned. No voice of truth had penetrated into his presence-chamber for many a long year. Catherine Parr, woman as she was, was the only one who dared to utter a noble sentiment, and it was impossible that she could long do that with impunity.

One day she ventured, in the presence of Gardiner, to expostulate with him on having forbidden the reading of the Scriptures, which he had formerly allowed. Henry showed unmistakable signs of vexation, and perceiving that she had gone too far, she turned the conversation with some pleasant observations, and soon after withdrew. No sooner had she disappeared than the king's wrath burst forth. "A good hearing it is," he said, "when women become such clerks, and much my comfort to come, in mine old age, to be taught by my wife."

The wily Gardiner jumped at the opportunity, and struck whilst the iron of Henry's temper was hot, to accomplish his long-desired ruin of the queen. He related to the king such things regarding the spread of heretical notions in the palace, and through the influence of the queen herself, as he thought would raise the vain