CHAPTER IV 1546 Anne Askew--Her trial and execution--Katherine Parr's danger--Plot against her--Her escape.

As the months of 1546 went by the measures taken by the King and his advisers to enforce unanimity of practice and opinion in matters of religion did not become less drastic. A great burning of books disapproved by Henry took place during the autumn, preceded in July by the condemnation and execution of a victim whose fate attracted an unusual amount of attention, the effect at Court being enhanced by the fact that the heroine of the story was personally known to the Queen and her ladies. It was indeed reported that one of the King’s special causes of displeasure was that she had been the means of imbuing his nieces—among whom was Lady Dorset, Jane Grey’s mother—as well as his wife, with heretical doctrines.

Added to the species of glamour commonly surrounding a spiritual leader, more particularly in times of persecution, Anne Askew was beautiful and young—not more than twenty-five at the time of her death—and the thought of her racked frame, her undaunted courage, and her final agony at the stake, may well have haunted with the horror of a night-mare those who had been her disciples, and who looked on from a distance, and with sympathy they dared not display.

There were other circumstances increasing the interest with which the melancholy drama was watched. Well born and educated, Anne had been the wife of a Lincolnshire gentleman of the name of Kyme. Their life together had been of short duration. In a period of bitter party feeling and recrimination, it is difficult to ascertain with certainty the truth on any given point; and whilst a hostile chronicler asserts that Anne left her husband in order “to gad up and down a-gospelling and gossipping where she might and ought not, but especially in London and near the Court,”28 another authority explains that Kyme had turned her out of his house upon her conversion to Protestant doctrines. Whatever might have been the origin of her mode of life, it is certain that she resumed her maiden name, and proceeded to “execute the office of an apostle.”29

Her success in her new profession made her unfortunately conspicuous, and in 1545 she was committed to Newgate, “for that she was very obstinate and heady in reasoning on matters of religion.” The charge, it must be confessed, is corroborated by her demeanour under examination, when the qualities of meekness and humility were markedly absent, and her replies to the interrogatories addressed to her were rather calculated to irritate than to prove conciliatory. On this first occasion, for example, asked to interpret certain passages in the Scriptures, she declined to comply with the request on the score that she would not cast pearls among swine—acorns were good enough; and, urged by Bonner to open her wound, she again refused. Her conscience was clear, she said; to lay a plaster on a whole skin might seem much folly, and the similitude of a wound appeared to her unsavoury.30

For the time she escaped; but in the course of the following year her case was again brought forward, and on this occasion she found no mercy. Her examinations, mostly reported by herself, show her as alike keen-witted and sharp-tongued, rarely at a loss for an answer, and profoundly convinced of the justice of her cause. If she was not without the genuine enjoyment of the born controversialist in the opportunity of argument and discussion, she possessed, underlying the self-assertion and confidence natural in a woman holding the position of a religious leader, a fund of indomitable heroism. For she must have been fully conscious of her danger. It is possible that, had she not been brought into prominence by her association with those in high places, she might again have escaped; but, apart from the grudge owed her for her influence over the King’s own kin, her attitude was almost such as to court her fate. Refusing “to sing a new song of the Lord in a strange land,” she replied to the Bishop of Winchester, when he complained that she spoke in parables, that it was best for him that she should do so. Had she shown him the open truth, he would not accept it.

“Then the Bishop said he would speak with me familiarly. I said, ‘So did Judas when he unfriendlily betrayed Christ....’ In conclusion,” she ended, in her account of the interview, “we could not agree.”

Spirited as was her bearing, and thrilling as the prisoner plainly was with all the excitement of a battle of words, it was not strange that the strain should tell upon her.

“On the Sunday,” she proceeds—and there is a pathetic contrast between the physical weakness to which she confesses and her undaunted boldness in confronting the men bent upon her destruction—“I was sore sick, thinking no less than to die.... Then was I sent to Newgate in my extremity of sickness, for in all my life I was never in such pain. Thus the Lord strengthen us in His truth. Pray, pray, pray.” Her condemnation was a foregone conclusion. It followed quickly, with a subsequent visit from one Nicholas Shaxton, who, having, for his own part, made his recantation, counselled her to do the same. He spoke in vain. It were, she told him, good for him never to have been born, “with many like words.” More was to follow. If her assertion is to be believed—and there seems no valid reason to doubt it—the rack was applied “till I was nigh dead.... After that I sat two long hours reasoning with my Lord Chancellor upon the bare floor. Then was I brought into a house and laid in a bed with as weary and painful bones as ever had patient Job. I thank my God therefore.”

A scarcely credible addition is made to the story, to the effect that when the Lieutenant of the Tower had refused to put the victim to the torture a second time, the Lord Chancellor, Wriothesley, less merciful, took the office upon himself, and applied the rack with his own hands, the Lieutenant departing to report the matter to the King, “who seemed not very well to like such handling of a woman.”31 What is certain is the final scene at Smithfield, where Shaxton delivered a sermon, Anne listening, endorsing his words when she approved of them and correcting them “when he said amiss.”

So the shameful episode was brought to an end. The tale, penetrating even the thick walls of a palace, must have caused a thrill of horror at Whitehall, accentuated by reason of certain events going forward there about the same time.

The King’s disease was gaining upon him apace. He had become so unwieldy in bulk that the use of machinery was necessary to move him, and with the progress of his disorder his temper was becoming more and more irritable. In view of his approaching death the question of the guardianship and custody of the heir to the throne was increasing in importance and the jealousy of the rival parties was becoming more embittered. In the course of the summer the Catholics about the Court ventured on a bold stroke, directed against no less a person than the Queen.

Emboldened by the tolerance displayed by the King towards her religious practices and the preachers and teachers she gathered around her, Katherine had grown so daring as to make matters of doctrine a constant subject of conversation with Henry, urging him to complete the work he had begun, and to free the Church of England from superstition.32 Henry appears at first—though he was a man ill to argue with—to have shown singular patience under his wife’s admonitions. But daily controversy is not soothing to a sick man’s nerves and temper, and Katherine’s enemies, watching their opportunity, conceived that it was at hand.

Henry’s habits had been altered by illness, and it had become the Queen’s custom to wait for a summons before visiting his apartments; although on some occasions, after dinner or supper, or when she had reason to imagine she would be welcome, she repaired thither on her own initiative. But perhaps the more as she perceived that time was short, she continued her imprudent exhortations. And still her enemies, wary and silent, watched.

Henry appears—and it says much for his affection for her—to have for a time maintained the attitude of a not uncomplacent listener. On a certain day, however, when Katherine was, as usual, descanting upon questions of theology, he changed the subject abruptly, “which somewhat amazed the Queen.” Reassured by perceiving no further signs of displeasure, she talked upon other topics until the time came for the King to bid her farewell, which he did with his customary affection.

The account of what followed—Foxe being, as before, the narrator—must be accepted with reservation. Gardiner, chancing to be present, was made the recipient of his master’s irritation. It was a good hearing, the King said ironically, when women were become clerks, and a thing much to his comfort, to come in his old days to be taught by his wife. Gardiner made prompt use of the opening afforded him; he had waited long for it, and it was not wasted. The Queen, he said, had forgotten herself, in arguing with a King whose virtues and whose learnedness in matters of religion were not only greater than were possessed by other princes, but exceeded those of doctors in divinity. For the Bishop and his friends it was a grievous thing to hear. Proceeding to enlarge upon the subject at length, he concluded by saying that, though he dared not declare what he knew without special warranty from the King, he and others were aware of treason cloaked in heresy. Henry, he warned him, was cherishing a serpent in his bosom.

It was risking much, but the Bishop knew to whom he spoke, and, working adroitly upon Henry’s fears and wrath, succeeded in obtaining permission to consult with his colleagues and to draw up articles by which the Queen’s life might be touched. “They thought it best to begin with such ladies as she most esteemed and were privy to all her doings—as the Lady Herbert, her sister, the Lady Lane, who was her first cousin, and the Lady Tyrwhitt, all of her privy chamber.” The plan was to accuse these ladies of the breach of the Six Articles, to search their coffers for documents or books compromising to the Queen, and, in case anything of that nature were found, to carry Katherine by night to the Tower. The King, acquainted with the design, appears to have given his consent, and all went on as before, Henry still encouraging, or at least not discouraging, his wife’s discourse on spiritual matters.

Time was passing; the bill of articles against the Queen had been prepared, and Henry had affixed his signature to it, whether with a deliberate intention of giving her over to her enemies, or, as some said, meaning to deter her from the study of prohibited literature—in which case, as Lord Herbert of Cherbury observes, it was “a terrible jest.”33 That Katherine herself did not regard the affair, as soon as she came to be cognisant of it, in the light of a kindly warning, is plain; for when, by a singular accident, the document containing the charges against her was dropped by one of the council and brought for her perusal, the effect upon her was such that the King’s physicians were summoned to attend her, and Henry himself, ignorant of the cause of her illness, and possibly softened by it, paid her a visit, and, hearing that she entertained fears that she had incurred his displeasure, reassured her with sweet and comfortable words, remained with her an hour, and departed.

Though Katherine had played her part well, she must have been aware that she stood on the brink of a precipice, and the ghosts of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard warned her how little reliance could be placed upon the King’s fitful affection. Deciding upon a bold step, she sought his bed-chamber uninvited after supper on the following evening, attended only by her sister, Lady Herbert, and with Lady Lane,34 her cousin, to carry the candle before her. Henry, found in conversation with his attendant gentlemen, gave his wife a courteous welcome, entering at once—contrary to his custom—upon the subject of religion, as if moved by a desire of gaining instruction from her replies. Read in the light of what Katherine already knew, this new departure may well have been viewed by her with misgiving; and she hastened to disclaim the position the King appeared anxious to assign her. The inferiority of women being what it was, she said, it was for man to supply from his wisdom what they lacked. She being a silly poor woman, and his Majesty so wise, how could her judgment be of use to him, in all things her only anchor, and, next to God, her supreme head and governor on earth?

The King demurred. The attitude of submission may have struck him as unfamiliar.

“Not so, by St. Mary,” he said. “You are become a doctor, Kate, to instruct us, as we take it, and not to be instructed or directed by us.”

The plain charge elicited, it was more easy to reply to it. The King had much mistaken her, Katherine humbly declared. It had ever been her opinion that it was unseemly for the woman to instruct and teach her lord and husband; her place was rather to learn of him. If she had been bold to maintain opinions differing from the King’s, it had been to “minister talk”—to make conversation, in modern language—to distract him from the thought of his infirmities, as also in the hope of profiting by his learned discourse—with more of the same nature.

Henry, perhaps not sorry to be convinced, yielded to the skilful flattery thus administered.

“Is it even so, sweetheart?” he said, “and tend your arguments to no worse end? Then perfect friends we are now again,” adding, as he took her in his arms and kissed her, that her words had done him more good than news of a hundred thousand pounds.

The next day had been fixed for the Queen’s arrest. As the appointed hour approached the King sought the garden, sending for Katherine to attend him there. Accompanied by the same ladies as on the night before, the Queen obeyed the summons, and there, under the July sun, the closing scene of the serio-comic drama was played. Amused, it may be, by the anticipation of his counsellors’ discomfiture, Henry was in good spirits and “as pleasant as ever he was in his life before,” when the Chancellor, with forty of the royal guard, appeared, ready to take possession of the culprit. What passed between Wriothesley and his master, at a little distance from the rest of the party, could only be matter of conjecture. The Chancellor’s words, as he knelt before the angry King, were not audible to the curious bystanders, but the King’s rejoinder, “vehemently whispered,” was heard. “Knave, arrant knave, beast and fool,” were the epithets applied to the crestfallen official. After which, he was promptly dismissed.

Katherine, whether or not she divined the truth, set herself to plead Wriothesley’s cause. Ignorance, not will, was in her opinion the probable origin of what had so manifestly moved Henry to wrath. The advocacy of the intended victim softened the King’s heart even more towards her.

“Ah, poor soul,” he said, “thou little knowest how ill he deserves this grace at thy hands. On my word, sweetheart, he hath been towards thee an arrant knave, and so let him go.”35

For the moment, at least, the danger was averted, and before it recurred the despot was in his grave, and Katherine was safe. It is curious to observe that in the list of contents to the Acts and Monuments the danger of the Queen is pointed out, “and how gloriously she was preserved by her kind and loving Husband the King.”

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