Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/226

206 But her name was written among those who were to serve Heaven in their deaths rather than their lives. The following summer she was again seized and brought before the inquisitors, whose appetite had been sharpened by the escape of Latimer. The Gardiner and Wriothesley faction were now her judges. They required her to state explicitly her opinion on the eucharist; and she knew this time that they would either kill her or force her to deny her faith. 'She would not sing the Lord's song in a strange land,' she said; and when Gardiner told her that she spoke in parables, she answered as another had answered, 'If I tell you the truth, ye will not believe me.' She was questioned for five weary hours, but nothing could be extracted from her; and the day after, attempts were made to shake her resolution by private persuasion. The brilliant worldly Paget, to whom confessions of faith 'were no things to die for,' put out the eloquence which had foiled the diplomatists of Europe. His arguments fell off like arrows from enchanted armour. Lord Lisle and Lord Parr, who believed as she believed, tried to prevail on her to say as they said. 'It was shame for them,' she replied, 'to counsel contrary to their knowledge.' Gardiner told her she would be burnt. 'God,' she answered, 'laughed his threatenings to scorn.'

She was taken to Newgate, and, as if to insure her sentence with her own hands, she wrote—

'The bread is but a remembrance of his death, or a sacrament of thanksgiving for it. Written by me, Anne Ascue, that neither wish death, nor yet fear his