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This post describes the torture and execution of a woman for religious beliefs in Tudor England. Shared solely for historical education and to honour those who died for conscience.
The Tortured Death of Anne Askew: England’s Most Gruesome Female Execution?
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Smithfield, London – 16 July 1546
In the summer of 1546, 25-year-old Anne Askew – gentlewoman, poet, and outspoken Protestant – became the only woman in English history known to have been both illegally tortured on the rack in the Tower of London and then burned alive for heresy.
Anne came from a Lincolnshire gentry family. Educated far beyond most women of her time, she converted to the reformed faith and openly criticised Catholic doctrine, especially transubstantiation. In 1545 she was arrested for the first time, questioned by Bishop Edmund Bonner and Lord Mayor of London, but released. In June 1546 she was arrested again – this time with direct involvement from King Henry VIII’s court, who hoped to use her to discredit Queen Catherine Parr, a known Protestant sympathiser.
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Refusing to name fellow believers or recant, Anne was condemned as a heretic. Because she was of gentle birth, the law forbade torture. Nevertheless, on 29 June 1546, Lord Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley and Sir Richard Rich personally turned the rack in the White Tower, stretching her body until her shoulders and hips were dislocated. Even the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Anthony Kingston, protested and walked out in horror.
Still unbroken, Anne was carried to Smithfield on 16 July 1546 on a chair – she could no longer walk. Tied to the stake with three male Protestant martyrs (John Lascelles, John Adams, and Nicholas Belenian), she refused a last-minute pardon if she would recant. As the flames rose, witnesses reported she showed no fear, praying aloud until the end.
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Her story, smuggled out of prison and published as The Examinations of Anne Askew (1546–1547) by John Bale and later John Foxe, became one of the most widely read Protestant martyr texts of the 16th century.
We remember Anne Askew today not to reopen old religious wounds, but to honour a woman who refused to betray her conscience even when the state broke her body; to recognise that the rack and the stake were weapons used against free thought itself; and to ensure that her final prayer at Smithfield – “Lord, I heartily I thank thee” – remains a reminder that courage in the face of tyranny is never in vain.
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They racked her until her joints tore apart. They burned her because she would not lie. Yet her voice still speaks.
Official & reputable sources
British Library – Harleian MS 421 (original examination records)
Foxe, John – Acts and Monuments (“Book of Martyrs”), 1563 edition
Freeman, Thomas S. & Wall, Sarah E. – “Racking the Body, Shaping the Text: The Account of Anne Askew” (Renaissance Quarterly, 2001)
Beilin, Elaine V. – The Examinations of Anne Askew (Oxford, 1996)
Tower of London Historic Royal Palaces archives – rack records, 1546