"After that they willed me to have a priest, at which I smiled. Then they asked me if it were not good. I said I would confess my faults unto God, for I was sure he would hear me with favour. And so I was condemned. And this was the ground of my sentence: my belief, which I wrote to the council, that the sacramental bread was left us to be received with thanksgiving in remembrance of Christ's death, the only remedy of our souls' recovery, and that thereby we also receive the whole benefits and fruits of his most glorious passion. Then would they know whether the bread in the box were God or no. I said, 'God is a Spirit, and will be worshipped in spirit and truth.' Then they demanded, 'Will you plainly deny Christ to be in the sacrament?' I answered, 'That I believe faithfully the eternal Son of God not to dwell there;' in witness whereof I recited Daniel iii., Acts vii. and xvii., and Matthew xxiv., concluding thus: 'I neither wish death nor yet fear his might; God have the praise thereof, with thanks.'"
Anne Askew was burnt at Smithfield with three other martyrs, July 16, 1546. Bonner, the Chancellor Wriothesley, and many nobles were present on state seats near St. Bartholomew's gate, and their only anxiety was lest the gunpowder hung in bags at the martyrs' necks should injure them when it exploded. Shaxton, the ex-Bishop of Salisbury, who had saved his life by apostacy, preached a sermon to the martyrs before the flames were put to the fagots.
In 1546 (towards the close of the life of Henry VIII.), the Earl of Surrey was tried for treason at the Guildhall. He was accused of aiming at dethroning the king, and getting the young prince into his hands; also for adding the arms of Edward the Confessor to his escutcheon. The earl, persecuted by the Seymours, says Lord Herbert, "was of a deep understanding, sharp wit, and deep courage, defended himself many ways—sometimes denying their accusations as false, and together weakening the credit of his adversaries; sometimes interpreting the words he said in a far other sense than that in which they were represented." Nevertheless, the king had vowed the destruction of the family, and the earl, found guilty, was beheaded on Tower Hill, January 19, 1547. He had in vain offered to fight his accuser, Sir Richard Southwell, in his shirt. The order for the execution of the duke, his father, arrived at the Tower the very night King Henry died, and so the duke escaped.
Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, another Guildhall sufferer, was the son of a Papist who had refused to take the oath of supremacy, and had been imprisoned in the Tower by Henry VIII. Nicholas, his son, a Protestant, appointed sewer to the burly tyrant, had fought by the king's side in France. During the reign of Edward VI. Throckmorton distinguished himself at the battle of Pinkie, and was knighted by the young king, who made him under-treasurer of the Mint. At Edward's death Throckmorton sent Mary's goldsmith to inform her of her accession. Though no doubt firmly attached to the Princess Elizabeth, Throckmorton took no public part in the Wyatt rebellion; yet, six days after his friend Wyatt's execution, Throckmorton was tried for conspiracy to kill the queen.
The trial itself is so interesting as a specimen of intellectual energy, that we subjoin a scene or two:—
Serjeant Stamford: Methinks those things which others have confessed, together with your own confession, will weigh shrewdly. But what have you to say as to the rising in Kent, and Wyatt's attempt against the Queen's royal person in her palace?
Chief Justice Bromley: Why do you not read to him Wyatt's accusation, which makes him a sharer in his treasons?
Sir R. Southwell: Wyatt has grievously accused you, and in many things which have been confirmed by others.
Sir N. Throckmorton: Whatever Wyatt said of me, in hopes to save his life, he unsaid it at his death; for, since I came into the hall, I heard one say, whom I do not know, that Wyatt on the scaffold cleared not only the Lady Elizabeth and the Earl of Devonshire, but also all the gentlemen in the Tower, saying none of them knew anything of his commotion, of which number I take myself to be one.
Sir N. Hare: Nevertheless, he said that all he had written and confessed before the Council was true.