Lord’s Day, Vol. 9 No. 44
Reformation in England – England Receives the Light (2)
For three chief reasons, we introduce at this point an English Reformation martyr named Anne Askew. Firstly, she was martyred during the reign of Henry VIII, whereas it is sometimes taken for granted that 16th-Century Protestants were put to death for their faith in the reign of Queen Mary Tudor only. But Henry’s reign had its sufferers for conscience and for Christ’s sake. Secondly, Anne Askew well represents the many women who “loved not their lives to the death”. For obvious reasons, the history of the Reformation period, as of all periods in the Christian era, is largely devoted to the witness and activities of men. But godly women also played their part and bore their witness. Thirdly, it is helpful, in the 20th century as in all others, to realize how martyrs bore testimony before their judges, and to remember that the Lord gave a special promise to his “witnesses”, as recorded in Luke 21:15, “For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.”
Anne Askew was the daughter of a Lincolnshire knight and was about 25 years of age when she was burned at the stake, after being tortured upon the rack at the stake by none other than the Lord Chancellor of England himself, in order to get her to abandon her “heresies”. Finally, she was swooned away and was taken to a house and laid in a bed, with as weary and painful bones as ever had patient Job.
During her imprisonment she wrote a poem of twelve verses of which we give three:
Like as armed knight
Appointed to the field,
With this world will I fight,
And faith shall be my shield
Faith is that weapon strong
Which will not fail at need;
My foes therefore among
Therewith will I proceed.
On Thee my care I cast,
For all their cruel spite
I set not by their haste,
For Thou art my delight
Anne was a person of ready speech and wit and in no uncertain way, she was accustomed to state her convictions. She was taken into one of London’s halls for close questioning by Christopher Dare, a theologian of the Roman Catholic Church. In her own account of the ordeal, she numbered the questions put to her:
- DARE: Do you believe that the sacrament hanging over the altar is the very body of Christ really?
ANNE: Why was Stephen stoned to death?
DARE: I cannot tell.
ANNE: No more will I answer your vain question.
Anne meant Dare to understand that Stephen had seen Christ in glory as Son of Man, standing at the right hand of God – Acts 7:56 – so that it was not possible for his body to be in a pix above a Roman altar on earth.)
(2) DARE: A woman has testified that you have read how God is not in temples made with hands.
ANNE: So it is said in the 7th and 17th chapters of Acts of the Apostles as Stephen and Paul spoke.
DARE: How do you take these sentences?
ANNE: I will not throw pearls among swine, for acorns are good enough.
(3) DARE: Why did you say that you would rather read five lines in the Bible than hear five masses?
ANNE: Because the one does greatly edify me, the other nothing at all: as St. Paul says, “If the trump give an uncertain sound who will prepare himself to the battle?”
(4) DARE: You have said that if an evil priest ministered, it was the devil and not God.
ANNE: I spoke no such thing, but I said that an evil person ministering to me could not hurt my faith; but in spirit, I received nevertheless the body and blood of Christ.
(5) DARE: What have you said concerning confession?
ANNE: That, as St. James saith, every man ought to acknowledge his faults to others, and the one to pray for the other.
(that is, Anne did not hold to the Roman Catholic confessional).
Later, Dare handed Anne over to Sir Martin Bowes, Lord Mayor of London, for further questioning:
BOWES: Thou foolish woman, after the words of consecration (i.e. in the service of the
Mass), is it not the Lord’s body?
ANNE: No, it is but consecrated bread, or sacramental bread.
BOWES: What if a mouse eat it after consecration? What will become of the mouse? What sayest thou, foolish woman?
ANNE: What shall become of it, say you, my Lord.
BOWES: I say that that mouse is damned.
ANNE: Alak, poor mouse!
Sent back to prison, Anne was visited by a priest instructed by Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London. He questioned her closely about “the sacrament of the altar”, only to receive the emphatic reply, “What I have said, I have said.” Bonner himself, therefore, decided to talk with her, thinking to a change of mind. Among other questions, he asked, “whether private masses benefited souls in purgatory.” Anne replied to him as she replied to Dare. Bonner answered, “what sort of an answer is that?” “Though it were but mean”, she replied, “yet it is good enough for the question.” A little later she again replied to his arguments, so that “he flung himself into his chamber in a great fury” (so runs the record). The “irresistible power” of a bishop had come up against an “immovable object”, namely, the faith of a true Protestant, even though found in a “weaker vessel”.
The burning of Anne Askew, in company with three others, took place outside St. Bartholomew’s Church, Smithfield, London. As depicted in old editions of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, on a platform erected alongside the stake sat the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Bedford, the Lord Mayor of London, and other notables. A sermon was preached, pardon being offered to the “heretics” if only they would recant while yet there was opportunity. Anne, outspoken as ever, commended whatever seemed scriptural in the preacher’s words, but when he set the Word of God aside, she corrected him, saying “There he misseth and speaketh without the Book.” Next, she was given a letter, said to be written that offered her pardon by the King himself, also offering her pardon if she would but follow the example of the preacher who had saved himself some time previously by a recantation. “I came not hither to deny my Lord and Master” was, for Anne, the only reply that would content her conscience. “Let justice be done”, cried the Lord Mayor, and without further delay, the fire was kindled. “Thus were these blessed martyrs’, says Foxe, “compassed with flames of fire as a blessed sacrifice unto God.”
We have described the trial and martyrdom of Anne Askew at some length in order to preserve the testimony of a remarkable young woman and to illustrate the strong faith of the many who held no office in the Church of their day. The English nation as a whole was profoundly stirred by the burnings; they remained long in the memory, and the more so as a copy of the Foxe’s Book was placed in all parish churches in the reign of Elizabeth so that all who could not afford to buy a copy – and it is a very large book – could read it on church premises.
It was not only martyr-fires, however, that turned England into a Protestant nation. Another factor of even greater importance was the translation of the Bible into English and the rapid growth of its circulation. The pioneer in this important work was William Tyndale, a scholar skilled in Hebrew and Greek languages. [Extracted and edited from Sketches from Church History by S.M. Houghton]
Yours lovingly,
Pastor Lek Aik Wee