The decline of the King’s health began in the summer of 1541–2, when he was attacked by a dangerous tertian fever, from which, thanks to his powerful constitution, he partially recovered.
At the time of his marriage with Anne of Cleves he was again in poor health, and during the proceedings for the King’s divorce from his Dutch consort, Cranmer laid great stress on the fact that although she had shared his chamber for six months, the bride was still to all intents and purposes unwed. At the siege of Boulogne, as we have seen, Henry was terribly altered, and the French ballad-writers jested about le cercle de fer, which, they averred, kept his ungainly carcass together. Queen Katherine was probably espoused rather as a skilful nurse than as a wife, in the ordinary acceptance of the term, and a most assiduous attendant she proved, kneeling for hours at a time rubbing his swelled legs and dressing his many ulcers. It would be unjust to the Queen’s memory to attribute this wifely devotion to none but selfish motives. But her contemporaries shrewdly guessed that, while fulfilling her wifely duty, she did not fail to work in her own interest, and that of her friends, with her own peculiar skill and tact. She certainly wished to be appointed Regent during Edward’s minority, and would gladly have excluded the Howards, Wriothesley, Gardiner, Rich, and the whole Catholic element from the King’s sick-room, while doing all she could to strengthen the hand of the Seymours, maternal uncles of the future King, who were intent on ruling his kingdom for him on strictly anti-papal lines. In the spring of the year 1546 the King had a bad relapse, and day by day the grey shadows of approaching death deepened on that broad and bloated countenance. He would not have the grim word mentioned in his presence, and any courtier who appeared before him dressed in mourning[55]—even for the nearest kin—was driven in fury from his sight. None the less, he realised that he had not many months to live. It was imperative, therefore, if any reconciliation with Rome was to be effected before the new reign began, that no time should be lost, and that some sharp and decisive blow should overthrow the influence of the Queen, now the chief intermediary between her sick spouse, Cranmer, and the Seymours. But Katherine, in spite of the notoriety of her intimate friendship with Sir Thomas Seymour, was far too clever to give her enemies any chance of blasting, or even smirching, her reputation. With respect to her religious opinions, which were distinctly heterodox, she was less guarded, however, and her enemies had good reason to believe that if they could convince the King, beyond any doubt, that she was in correspondence with those whom he was pleased to term “heretics,” she would never be able to weather the storm her treachery must inevitably raise in the King’s resentful breast.
Henry, whose brain remained astonishingly active, notwithstanding his infirmities, had never been so irritable and ferocious as during the last few months of his life. He was like a half-dead rattlesnake, which may recover life and spring afresh upon its prey at any moment. Never were the fires at Smithfield so active as in 1546. Early in this year six poor wretches were sent to the stake—three Catholics; the other three, Reformers. To demonstrate the impartiality of their merciless judge they were all chained together. People scarcely knew what they must believe or what disbelieve, to escape execution. The King’s informers were always at work, spying upon the sayings and doings of people in every rank of life; and the wonder is that the Queen and her ladies were not caught in some imprudent admission or other, and convicted. At last, however, in the early spring of 1546, an incident occurred which brought Katherine’s foes their longed-for chance of effecting her downfall.
Anne Askew, second daughter of Sir William Askew, or Ayscough, of South Kelsy, Lincolnshire, was born at Stallingbrough, near Grimsby, in 1521. When about fifteen years of age, she was married, without her consent, to Mr. Thomas Kyme, a Lincolnshire squire and neighbour, who had been previously “contracted” to her elder sister. During her early wedded life Mrs. Kyme appears to have been happy enough, and became the mother of two children. She presently occupied herself in studying the newly translated Scriptures, and shortly after imagined she had a divine mission to preach the gospel and correct what she deemed the theological errors of her neighbours, especially on the subject of the Lord’s Supper, concerning which she held Genevan views.
After a few years of discomfort, Mr. Kyme, who, according to the latest researches, entertained contrary religious opinions to those of his wife, began to complain of the scanty enjoyment he derived from her society. She was perpetually “gadding up and down the country, a-gospelling and a-gossiping, instead of looking after her children.” Anne is described as a handsome and daring young woman with a good deal of native wit and ability, and was evidently the prototype of not a few ladies of our own time, who prefer public life and controversy to domestic duty and retirement. She even took upon herself to read and comment on the New Testament in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral, where she was often to be found surrounded by an interested or amused group of priests and people. This state of things no Dean or Chapter could be expected to endure, and one fine day Mrs. Kyme found herself forcibly ejected from the sacred edifice. After this incident, she must have had some unusual disagreement with her husband, for her relations persuaded her to leave the town, and she travelled to London, where she soon made herself conspicuous as a preacher of the new learning, and secured several distinguished converts. She lodged in a house near the Temple, and one of her neighbours, Mr. Wadloe, a hot Catholic, who began by deriding her behaviour, ended by admiring her “godliness”; to use his own expression—“At mydnyght when I and others applye ourselves to sleape, or do worse, Mrs. Askew” (she had resumed her maiden name), “begins to pray, and ceaseth not in many howers after,” doubtless to the edification of such of her neighbours as suffered from insomnia.
By dint of perseverance, and also, it may be, through her connections, Anne Askew formed the acquaintance of several great ladies of the Court, and is said to have obtained, through the offices of the Duchess of Suffolk, an interview with the Queen, to whom, in the presence of her ladies, notably Lady Tyrwhitt, Lady Lane, Lady Denny, and the little Lady Jane Grey,[56] she offered some copies of Tyndale’s version of the New Testament, and certain tracts arguing against Transubstantiation, which were subsequently found in the Queen’s own closet and in the possession of the King’s “Suffolk nieces.”
It was in March 1545 that Mrs. Askew was first arrested on a charge of heresy and taken to Sadler’s Hall, where she was denounced to the civil authorities and taken before the Lord Mayor, who in the course of his examination questioned her as to the probable changes in a consecrated wafer after a “mowse” had swallowed it, whereupon she “made no answer but smiled,” and was committed to the Counter. That much-abused man, Bishop Bonner, appears to have taken an interest in her case, and endeavoured to save her from an awful fate. He granted her a private interview and drew up a form of recantation which she signed in the following ambiguous terms: “I, Anne Askew, do believe all manner of things contained in the Catholic Church and not otherwise.” On this, Bonner, whose patience had been severely tried,—for Anne was very sharp-tongued and uncompromising,—waxed wroth, and taking her by the shoulders, pushed her out of the chamber. Her next friend was Dr. Weston, afterwards Bishop of Westminster, who got her liberated on her own security; and for some months we hear no more about her, except that she was busy preaching and distributing her tracts secretly. On 10th May 1546 both Mr. and Mrs. Kyme received a summons to present themselves within a specified time before the Privy Council, then sitting at Greenwich, and they accordingly appeared on the 19th of the following June before the Chancellor of the Augmentations, Sir Richard Rich, the Bishops of Durham and Winchester and a number of other noblemen and gentlemen, and were put through a severe cross-examination.[57] Anne, we learn, received this summons in London, but her husband came to town on purpose to attend. Kyme got off with a caution, on his promise to return forthwith to Lincoln, and remain there. His wife, in open court, declared she would never again recognise him as her husband. He went back to Lincoln, and we lose sight of him. All we know is that he died, where he is buried, at Friskne in 1591.
Anne Askew was eventually arraigned before the King’s Justices at Guildhall for speaking against the Sacrament of the Altar, contrary to the Statute of the Six Articles. This time she appeared with two other “heretics,” one of them that singular personage Dr. Nicholas Shaxton, ex-Bishop of Salisbury, whose pupil she is said to have been. Shaxton, a Norfolk man by birth, was one of the Commission appointed by Gardiner in connection with the divorce of Katherine of Aragon, and during the proceedings he so favoured the King’s view that he eventually became almoner to Anne Boleyn and Bishop of Salisbury. At a later date he preached Zwinglian doctrines concerning the Eucharist, got himself into serious difficulties with Archbishop Cranmer, and was forced to relinquish his see. After a time he became a notorious “gospeller,” and was finally arrested with Anne Askew and a man named Christopher White. The lady and White were both sent to Newgate; but the former recanted, and so escaped a fiery ordeal. Shaxton did the same, obtained his pardon, and was actually ordered to visit Anne in prison, and persuade her to follow his example. But, weak woman though she was, Anne was made of sterner stuff than the ex-prelate. “It were better for you you had not been born than do that which you have done,” cried she; and, crestfallen, her former friend and tutor left her presence. Her condemnation followed immediately afterwards. It was presently noticed that Anne enjoyed more creature comforts in prison than the customs of Newgate allowed. She explained the matter by saying that “her maid went abroad 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.