Martyr Anne Askew

What’s In Your Bible: Martyr Anne Askew

Anne Askew is the only woman on record known to have been both tortured on the rack in the Tower of London and burnt at the stake.

Askew was open about her Not Roman Catholic Christianity and read from the Bible publicly.

(It was considered taboo for a woman to openly read the Bible in English in public.)

She was arrested and tried for heresy.

When asked about the mass: She said she would rather read five lines in the Bible than to hear five masses.

Inquisitors asked about the Eucharist: "If the host should fall and a mouse ate it, did the mouse receive God or no?” she simply smiled.

When the Bishop of Winchester said that she should be burned: Askew said: when she searched the scriptures, she couldn’t find anywhere where Jesus or the Apostles put anyone to death.

She was then taken to Newgate prison.

They tried to get her to surrender names of other believers in Jesus Christ outside of the Roman Catholic Church but she kept quiet.

Askew was tortured at White Tower.

She was shown the rack and asked if she would name other believers as she.

Askew declined. She was asked to remove all her clothing except her shift.

Askew climbed onto the rack, and her wrists and ankles were fastened.

Again, she was asked for names, but said nothing.

The wheel of the rack was turned, pulling Askew along the device and lifting her so that she was held taut about 5 inches above its bed.

Askew wrote from prison that she fainted from pain and was lowered and revived.

They did this twice.

The torturers turned the handles so hard that Anne was drawn apart, her shoulders and hips were pulled from their sockets and her elbows and knees were dislocated.

Askew's cries could be heard in the garden next to White Tower.

When it came time to burn her, due to the severe torture she had endured, she was carried to the stake on a chair.

They gave her one last chance to recant. She said she would not deny her Lord and Master.

On 16 July 1546, 25 year old Anne Askew was martyred by being burned alive at the stake in Smithfield, London.

Anne Askew was burned at the stake because she Studied to Shew Herself Approved unto God.

Dr. Steven A. Hite

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