Anne Askew
Her father was a gentleman in the court of King Henry VIII, as well as a juror in the trial of Anne Boleyn's co-accused.
The torturers, Lord Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley and Sir Richard Rich, used the rack, but Askew refused to renounce her beliefs.
[9] In the last year of Henry VIII's reign, Askew was caught up in a court struggle between religious traditionalists and reformers.
Stephen Gardiner was telling the king that diplomacy – the prospect of an alliance with the Roman Catholic Emperor Charles V – required a halt to religious reform.
The traditionalist party pursued tactics tried out three years previously with the arrests of minor evangelicals in the hope that they would implicate those who were more highly placed.
[10] The people rounded up were in many cases strongly linked to Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, who spent most of the period absent from court in Kent: Askew's brother Edward was one of his servants and Nicholas Shaxton (who was brought in to put pressure on Askew to recant) was acting as a curate for Cranmer at Hadleigh.
The intention of her interrogators may have been to implicate Queen Katherine Parr through her ladies-in-waiting and close friends, who were suspected of having harboured Protestant beliefs.
[14] When Christopher Dare asked for her interpretation of this saying she mocked them, invoking the Sermon on the Mount: "I answered, that I would not throw pearls among swine, for acorns were good enough" (Matthew 7:6).
She often played upon traditional gender roles to mock her questioners telling them "it is agaynst saynt Paules lernynge, that [she] being a woman, should interpret the scriptures, specially where so many wise men were.
Anabaptists were especially feared because they claimed the authority of the Holy Spirit and rejected other laws (like the Münster rebellion which declared the establishment of a "kingdom of a thousand years").
[18] 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 and slowly stretched.
[20] They 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.
When he spoke anything she considered to be the truth, she audibly expressed agreement; but when he said anything contrary to what she believed scripture stated, she exclaimed: "There he misseth, and speaketh without the book.
Analysis has suggested that Bale added and deleted parts of Askew's text to position her as a "weak vessel of the Lord", rather than an independent woman and scholar.
Foxe removed Bale's notes to Askew's text, but then added his own along with uncited new information and edits to the language.
[27] While Bale is criticised and Foxe is often commended for doing a better job with capturing her narrative, it is important to point out the accuracy issues of the two texts principally responsible for Askew's legacy.
[30] Anne Askew's autobiographical and published Examinations chronicle her persecution and offer a unique look into 16th-century femininity, religion, and faith.
It depicts her confrontations with male authority figures of the time who challenged aspects of life: from her progressive divorce, which she initiated, to her religious beliefs, which set her apart in England as a devout Protestant woman.
Her ability to avoid indictment in 1545 points to what Paula McQuade calls Askew's "real brilliance", showing "her being familiar enough with English law to attempt to use the system to her benefit".
Not only was she able to write of her experiences, she was also able to correspond with learned men of the time, such as John Lascelles and Dr. Edward Crome who were also arrested for heresy.
