The Nine Days' Queen, Lady Jane Grey, and Her Times. Richard Davey
into the streets and made moan to the prentices and they did send her money!” But her persecutors refused to believe this story, and so one afternoon, not long before her martyrdom, she was conveyed to the Tower, taken to the torture chamber, and there racked in the presence of Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, Sir Richard Rich, Sir John Barker, and Sir Anthony Knyvett, Constable of the Tower. Hitherto no one had been tortured in England for conscience’ sake, this terrible resource being solely employed to extract information from persons suspected of treasonable practices. Wriothesley, exasperated at his failure to elicit direct information or satisfactory answers from his victim, turned the screws himself, after Knyvett had refused to order her to be further tormented by the official executioner. Sir Richard Rich lent his hand to the Chancellor in this merciless task, and so, to use poor Anne’s own words, she “was nigh dead.”58
Dr. Lingard and other historians have cast doubt upon the veracity of this horrible story, but the scene is described by Anne herself in her “Narrative,” dictated a few days before her death, and published at Marburg, in the Duchy of Hesse, in 1547, with a long running commentary by John Bale, afterwards Bishop of Ossory. In his Three Conversions of England, the Jesuit, Father Parsons, who had access to much information and evidence long since destroyed or lost, not only confirms the truth of the torture episode, but adds that it was ordered by the King himself, who, hearing of the intercourse between his Queen and Anne, “caused her to be apprehended and put to the rack, to know the truth thereof. And by her confession he learned so much of Queen Katherine, as he had purposed to burn her also, if he had lived.” Parsons goes on to say that “the King’s sickness and death, shortly ensuing, was the chief cause of her escape.” Mrs. Askew bravely endured the most horrible torments rather than betray her friends’ trust, and only yielded so far as to admit that whilst in prison she had received ten shillings, delivered by a man in a blue livery. She thought the money had been sent her by the Countess of Hertford, but was not sure. She had a further sum of eight shillings at the hand of a footman in a purple livery, and believed it was a gift from Lady Denny. Questioned if she knew Lady Fitzwilliam, the Duchess of Suffolk, Lady Sussex, or any other great ladies of the Court, she evasively answered that she “knew nothing about them that could be proved.” She does not seem to have been questioned point-blank as to whether she had ever had any direct dealings with the Queen. Wriothesley may have thought he had already obtained sufficient information for his purpose. However that may have been, the stout-hearted lady was sent back to Newgate, there to spend her last three days of life, which she occupied in writing and dictating the “Narrative” to be found among Dr. Bale’s writings.59
On the eve of her execution Anne Askew and three men who had been condemned for heresy at the same time as herself were visited in the little parlour at Newgate by George Throckmorton and his brother, who were kinsmen of the Queen—a rather suspicious circumstance. They were cautioned in time, and thus escaped being arrested on a charge of heresy, which might have proved fatal to themselves and their royal cousin. John Louthe, the Reformer, who has left us an account of the meeting, also came, at great risk to himself, to encourage the unfortunate Anne. Mrs. Askew, with an “Angel’s countenance and a smiling face,” talked “merrily” with her unhappy companions, John Laselles, who had been a gentleman in attendance upon the King, and is supposed to have been the individual who betrayed the secrets of Katherine Howard; Nicholas Bolenian, a priest from Shropshire; and John Adams, a tailor. They talked on religious subjects until it was time to separate. The next day, 16th July, Mrs. Askew and her three fellow-prisoners were taken from Newgate to Smithfield. So dislocated were the poor lady’s limbs that she had to be carried to her doom in a chair. Cranmer, seeking to throw the full odium of the horrible business on Gardiner, kept much in the background in the whole matter of Anne Askew. He did not attend the ecclesiastical commission which condemned her to the stake; but for all that his signature is affixed to her death-warrant. Six years later, another martyr, Joan Bocher, one of the last of his many victims, reminded the Archbishop that he had martyred her friend Anne Askew for teaching more or less the same doctrines he now preached himself.
In the 1563 edition of Foxe’s Martyrs there is a most curious engraving, probably after an original drawing, representing the burning of Anne Askew and her companions. The spectators are kept back by a ring fence within which we see the stake, and a quaint pulpit, from which Dr. Nicholas Shaxton, duly restored to grace, preached a sermon, supporting the very dogma for denying which he had been prosecuted but a few days previously. Anne is shown dressed in white; one side of the pyre is entirely devoted to her, while the three men, apparently naked to the waist, are bound together, on the side opposite the pulpit. The concourse of people appears enormous; the mob seems to seethe round the scaffold, loll out of the surrounding windows, and even swarm on the opposite roofs. On a raised bench, under a canopy, sit Wriothesley, Rich, the Dukes of Norfolk, Surrey, “Swearing Russell,” and the Lord Mayor. These worthies, it appears, were sorely perturbed by a rumour that there was an unusual amount of gunpowder on the spot, and were very much afraid of a dangerous explosion. Their terrors were swiftly allayed when Bedford informed the company that the explosive in question was merely a number of small bags of gunpowder concealed about the persons of the victims with the object of shortening their sufferings.
At the very last moment Mrs. Askew was offered a pardon on condition that she recanted and gave up the names of her high-born friends. She refused: the Lord Mayor shouted Fiat justitia, and the faggots were lighted. Presently the fire crackled. A quick succession of explosions followed, the smoke concealing the wretched victims from sight. When the flames and smoke died down only the charred and blackened remains of four human beings could be descried. Clouds had been gathering; a peal of thunder rolled, and heavy drops of rain soon dispersed the throng. The show was over, and the home-returning spectators chatted as they went, blaming or praising the deed, according to their individual view. The horror of it does not seem to have affected them much, although among the Reformers and the better classes of all creeds expressions of hearty indignation were not lacking. But the masses were accustomed to such sights of horror, and so, indeed, were our own immediate forbears, until public executions ceased and the death sentence was carried out in the courtyards of the prisons. We have indeed progressed in these matters since 1546 and even since 1868.
A few days after the burning of the unfortunate Lincolnshire lady, Foxe tells us, Wriothesley, Gardiner, and Rich waited on the King, and so persuaded him that Anne had made damaging revelations concerning the Queen’s intercourse with heretics that Henry “proposed to burn her also.” His Majesty, in his rage, actually signed a warrant for the arrest of his offending Consort and handed it to Wriothesley. That worthy let the paper drop in a corridor or gallery close to the Queen’s apartment. One of her servants picked it up and carried it to Her Majesty, who was so terrified by its contents that she fell into violent hysterics. Her apartments were close to the King’s, and Henry, overhearing the outcry, and probably disturbed by the noise, sent to inquire what was amiss. The Queen’s physician, Wendy, informed the messenger that Her Majesty was dangerously ill, and her sickness, to his reckoning, caused by sudden and extreme distress of mind. Whereupon the King sent word that she was not to trouble herself further, as no ill was intended to her. Greatly comforted by this reassuring message, Katherine presently felt herself sufficiently recovered to receive a visit from her husband, who, at great personal inconvenience, caused himself to be conveyed into her apartment in his chair. Nothing could have been better calculated to revive the drooping spirits of the scared Consort than the sight of her august spouse in a good humour. The following evening she was well enough to return the King’s visit. She was accompanied by the Lady Tyrwhitt, her sister the Lady Herbert, by the King’s niece the Lady Jane Grey, and by the Lady Lane, who bore the candles before Her Majesty. The King welcomed the Queen and her company very courteously, and, bidding her be seated, in a cheerful tone entered into a controversial conversation with her. He possibly wished to “draw” his Consort upon certain theological questions; but she shrewdly observed that “since God had appointed him Supreme Head of the Church it was not for her to teach him theology, but to learn it from him.” “Not so, by St. Mary,” said the King, “you are become a doctor, Kate, to instruct us, and not to be instructed of us, as oftentimes we have seen.” “Indeed, indeed, Sire,” quoth the Queen, “if your Majesty so conceive, my meaning has been mistaken, for I have always held it preposterous for a woman to instruct her lord.” “If,” she continued, “I have occasionally ventured