ANNE ASKEW, a daughter of Sir William Askew, was born at Stallingborough in 1521. She received an excellent education, and from youth was devoted to study of the Bible and to discussion of doctrine with churchmen. While still quite young she was forced to marry Thomas Kyme who, when she was the mother of two children, drove her from home because her religious principles were obnoxious to him.

        Apparently in quest of a divorce from him, she made her way to London, where she was received with kindness by Katherine Parr, who was favourable to the Reformation. Meanwhile Kyme is said to have accused Anne of heresy. The Reformation had left Henry a Roman Catholic in all but allegiance to the Pope, and his ministers at Once began a protracted series of questionings, in part intended to win Anne back to conformity, in part to convict her.

         She faced one enquiry after another with unshaken fortitude, and although committed to goal when agonisingly ill, refused to sub-scribe to the unreformed doctrine of the Real Presence in the Sacrament. Finally, a prisoner at the Tower, she was submitted to horrible tortures_, and Lord Chancellor Wriothesley and Sir Richard Rich themselves turned the screws of the rack to heighten the torment

         In spite of her sufferings and the repeated efforts of the leading doctors of the Church to induce her to change her views, the heroic woman remained steadfast, and, maimed and broken, still argued bravely with her persecutors. She was condemned to death as a heretic, but so helpless was she after the rack that she had to be carried to Smithfield in a chair.

         Anne Askew's broken body had to be supported at the stake by a chain, but to the end she was mistress of herself and commented acutely on points with which she disagreed in the sermon preceding the lighting of the fire. She died in company with three other martyrs, on July 16, 1546. She was only 25.