1570 Edition | Book 8 | Page 1456 
onelye health and saluation of their soules. The breade and the wyne were left vs for a sacramentall communion, or a mutuall participation of the inestimable benefites of his most precious death and bloudsheeding, and that we should in the ende thereof be thankeful together for that most necessary grace of our redemption: For in the closing vp thereof, he sayd thus: This doo ye in remembraunce of me. Yea,so oft as ye shall eate it, or drinke it.MarginaliaLuk. 11.
1. Cor. 11. Luke. xj. and i. Corin. xj. Els should we haue bene forgetfull of that wee ought to haue in dayly remembraunce, and also bene altogether vnthankfull for it. Therefore it is mete, that in our prayers we cal vnto God to graft in our foreheades, the true meanyng of the holye Ghost concerning this Communion. For Saint Paule sayth: the letter slayeth: the spirite is it onely that geueth lyfe. Marginalia2. Cor. 3.ij. Corinth. iij. Marke well the sixt chapter of Iohn, where all is applyed vnto fayth. Note also the fourth chapter of Saint Paules first Epistle to the Corinth. and in the ende thereof ye shal finde that, the thinges whych are sene, are temporall, but they that are not sene, are euerlasting.Marginalia1. Cor. 4. Yea, looke in the thirde chapter to the Hebrues, and ye shall finde that, Christ as a sonne (and no seruant) ruleth ouer his house, whose house are we, (& not the dead tēple) if we hold fast the cōfidence & reioysing of that hope to the ende. MarginaliaHeb. 3.Wherefore, as sayde the holy Ghost: To day if ye shall heare his voyce, harden not your hartes. &c. MarginaliaPsal. 95.Psalm. 59.
CloseAskew's summons to appear before the Privy Council with her husband Sir Thomas Kyme is recorded in Privy Council records. See Acts of the Privy Council of England, ed. John Roche Dasent, 46 vols (London, 1890), 1: 424, 1: 462).
YOur request, as concerning my prison fellowes, I am not able to satisfie, because I heard not their examinations: but the effect of myne was this. I being before the Counsell, was asked of Maister Kyme.
CloseIn the first two editions of the Lattre Examinations edited by John Bale(both published in 1547), Bale elucidates on this question from the Privy Council by informing his reader of the circumstances of Askew's marriage, as well as offering justification for her pursuit of a divorce. He first explains that Askew was married against her will (following the death of her sister who had been betrothed to Sir Thomas Kyme, Anne's husband). He then argues that she yet 'demeaned her selfe lyke a Christen wyfe', having two children with her husband. However, 'by oft readynge of the sacred Bible', she converted from 'all olde superstycyons of papystrye, to a perfyght beleve in Jhesus Christ'. Having been driven for her faith from her husband's house, he claims, Askew considered herself 'free from that uncomelye kynde of coacted marryage, by thys doctryne of S. Paul 1 Cor. 7. If a faytfull woman have an unbelevynge husbande, whych wyll not tarrye with her, she may leave hym. For a brother or syster is not in subjeccyon to soch, specyallye where as the marryage afore is unlawfull'. Askew sought a divorce for this reason and, 'above all', because of her husband's cruel expulsion of her from their home, 'in despyght of Christes veryte'. She could not, supposes Bale, have considered Kyme 'worthye of her marryage' when he so 'spyghtfullye hated God the chefe autor [sic] of marriage' (Bale, Lattre Examination [1547], 15r-v).
[Back to Top]Despite Bale's ability energetically to defend Askew's pursuit of a divorce from Kyme, Foxe's decision to withhold comment himself on Askew's marital problems has been interpreted as reflecting discomfort on his part with this aspect of her story (Thomas F. Freeman and Sarah E. Wall, 'Racking the Body, Shaping the Text: The Account of Anne Askew in Foxe's Book of Martyrs', Renaissance Quarterly 54 [2001], 1180).
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CloseAs Thomas Freeman and Sarah Wall have noted, this shoulder note is new to the 1570 (second) edition of the English Acts and Monuments. They interpret Foxe's inclusion of this note as evidence that he had learned of Askew's marital problems subsequent to his publication of the first edition of the Acts and Monuments (1563). (See Thomas F. Freeman and Sarah E. Wall, 'Racking the Body, Shaping the Text: The Account of Anne Askew in Foxe's Book of Martyrs', Renaissance Quarterly 54 [2001], 1180.)
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CloseThe Lord Chancellor (whom Foxe calls Wrisley) will later be identified as one of Askew's torturers.
CloseThe Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, and the Lord Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley will be the main players in the supposed plot against Catherine Parr.
Then had I diuers rebukes of the Counsel, because I would not expresse my mynde in all thinges as they would haue me. But they were not in the meane time vnanswered for all that, which nowe to rehearse were to much: for I was with them there about. v. houres. Then the Clerke of the Counsell conueyed mee from thence to my Lady Garnish.
[Back to Top]MarginaliaAnne Askewe brought agayne before the Counsell.The next day I was brought againe before the coūsell. Then would they needes know of me, what I said to the Sacrament. I aunswered, that I alreadye had sayd that I could say. Then after diuers words, they bad me go by. Then came my Lord Lisle, my Lord of Essex, and the bishop of Winchester, requiring me earnestly that I should confesse the sacrament to be fleshe, bloud, and bone. Thē said I to my Lord Parre and my Lord Lisle, that it was great shame for them to counsel contrarye to their knowledge. Whereunto in fewe wordes they did say, that they would gladly all thinges were well
CloseBoth Lisle and Essex were known evangelicals; thus Askew's comment that it was 'great shame for them to counsayle contrary to their knowledge'.
Then the bishop sayd, he would speake with me familiarly. MarginaliaWinchester aunswered home.I sayd, so did Iudas when he vnfrendly betrayed Christ. Then desired the bishop to speake with me alone. But that I refused. He asked me why? I sayd: that in the mouth of two or three witnesses, euery matter should stand, after Christes and Paules doctrine. MarginaliaMath. 18.
2. Cor. 13.Mathew. xviij. ij. Corinth. xiij.
Then my Lord Chauncelour began to examine me againe of the Sacrament. Then I asked hym howe long he would hault on both sydes?
CloseAskew's retort to Wriothesley, in which she asked 'how long he woulde halt on both sides', does not indicate suspicion of evangelical tendencies on his part. Rather, halting on 'both sides' is a reference to the state of the English Church, which has rid itself of popery, and yet maintains idolatry; is no longer papist, and yet (in the evangelical view) retains the practices and priesthood of Baal. As Bale adds in his elucidation of Askew's words against Wriothesley, 'For all our newe Gospell, yet wyll we styll beare the straungers yoke with the unbelevers, and so become neyther whote nor colde, that God may spewe us out of hys mouth' (Bale, Lattre Examination [1547], 19r-v). For further discussion of this sort of evangelical critique of the Henrician Church, see Alec Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 132-33.
[Back to Top]Then they made me a bill of the sacrament, willing me to sette my hand therunto: but I would not. Then on the sonday I was sore sicke, thinking no lesse then to die. MarginaliaA. Askew desired to speake with M. Latimer.Therfore I desyred to speake with M. Latimer: but it would not be. Then was I sent to Newgate in my extremitie of sickenes: for in all my life afore was I neuer in such paine. Thus the Lorde strengthen vs in the truth. Pray, pray, pray
CloseAskew's desire to see Hugh Latimer is another indication of her clear familiarity with the prominent evangelicals of her day. When she requested this audience, Latimer had himself recently survived interrogation for counseling Crome against recantation (See Letters & Papers Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, ed. James Gairdner and R.H. Brodie [London, 1862 1932], I: 823 [14 May 1546].
[Back to Top]Askew's illness and request for Latimer's counsel, at this point in her Lattre Examination, has been interpreted as a moment of self-described epiphany modelled on that of Saul of Tarsus (marked by physical suffering), in which she realized her fate and stopped attempting to save herself from condemnation. Her request for Latimer and illness is immediately followed, in the Lattre Examination, by her 'first' confession of her sacramentarian belief denying the Real Presence before the Privy Council, after which she is formally condemned as a heretic. (See Paula McQuade, '"Except that they had offended the Lawe": Gender and Jurisprudence in the Examinations of Anne Askew', Literature & History 3 [1994], 9.) However, Kimberly Coles has contested this view, pointing out that Askew had already, when she asked for Latimer, revealed her heresy to William Paget (Kimberly Anne Coles, 'The Death of the Author [and the Appropriation of her Text]: the Case of Anne Askew's Examinations', Modern Philology 99 [May 2002], 535). (The relevant discussion between Paget and Askew does not appear in Foxe's version of the Examinations. This is possibly because Paget, having survived Henry's reign to retain his office of principal secretary to the king during Edward's, was still too important a man, early in Elizabeth's reign, deliberately to antagonize, but it is more likely that the discussion with Paget was omitted from Foxe's base text. The pages with the Paget discussion on them are glued together in many surviving copies of Bale's 1547 Lattre Examination (p. 21), and it is excised in later editions. As Freeman and Wall point out, Paget was dead by 1570 (he died in 1563), and in the second edition of the Acts and Monuments (1570), Foxe identifies him as having advised Philip and Mary to execute Elizabeth (Thomas F. Freeman and Sarah E. Wall, 'Racking the Body, Shaping the Text: The Account of Anne Askew in Foxe's Book of Martyrs', Renaissance Quarterly 54 [2001], 1172-3).
[Back to Top]MarginaliaThe confession of A. Askew in Newgate.I Finde in the scriptures (sayd she) that Christ tooke the breade and gaue it to his disciples, saying: Take, eate, this is my body which shall be broken for you, meaning in substance his own very body, the bread being therof an only signe or sacramēt. For after like maner of speaking he sayd, he would breake downe the temple, and in three dayes builde it vppe againe, MarginaliaAs Christes body is called the Temple in the Scripture: so is the bread called Christs bodye.signifying hys own bodye by the temple, as Saint Iohn declareth it, Iohn. ij. and not the stony temple it selfe. So that the breade is but a remembraunce of hys death, or a sacrament of thankes geuing for it, whereby wee are knyt vnto hym by a communion of christen loue. Although there be many that cannot perceiue the true meanyng thereof, for the veile that Moyses put ouer hys face before the children of Israel, that they should not see the clearenes therof. MarginaliaExod. 24.
2. Cor. 3.Exod. xxiiij. and. ij. Corin. iij. I perceiue the same veile remayneth to this day. But when God shall take it away, then shall these blinde men see. For it is playnly expressed in the historye of Bell in the Bible
Close'Bell' is Ba'al.
Written by me Anne Askevv, that neither wi-
sheth death, nor yet feareth his might: and as
mery as one that is bound towards heauen.
Truth is layd in prison. MarginaliaLuke. 21.Luke. 21. The law is turned to Wormewood. MarginaliaAmos. 6.Amos. 6. And there can no right iudgement goe forth. MarginaliaEsai. 59.Esai. 59.
Oh forgeue vs all our sinnes, & receiue vs graciously. As for the workes of our hādes, we will no more call vpō thē. For it is thou lord that art our God. Thou shewest euer mercy vnto the fatherles.
Oh if they would do this (sayth þe Lord): J should heale their sores, yea with all my hart would I loue them.
O Ephraim, what haue I to do with Idols any more? who so is wise shall vnderstād this. And he that is rightly instructed, will regard it: For the wayes of the Lord are righteous: Such