Married English Martyrs--Anne Askew (1521-1546) and Margaret Clitherow (1556-1586)

I first toured the Tower of London when I was 18. I keenly remember seeing display cases showcasing the crown jewels and crowns worn by centuries of monarchs. My mind, then was on an imagined life of royalty and splendor. On my second tour of London, decades later, as we floated past the Tower on a boat on the Thames, I more fully understood the heavy iron gates under the tower were designed to receive religious and political prisoners who threatened the crown. On my third, and most recent visit, to the Thames, my thoughts were of a twenty-five year old woman named Anne Askew, whose fame is as the first woman to be tortured in the Tower. 

English religious history is complex but important to understand why good women would be killed by their own government for Christian convictions.

The earliest Christian missionaries reached the Britain by the second century but waves of raiding Vandals and local warfare sacked monasteries and plundered churches over the next couple of centuries. Renewed missionary efforts in the 6th century by Augustine of Canterbury in the south and Aidan of Lindisfarne to the north (and countless others) led to eventual spread of Christianity during the next millennium. Great monasteries, soaring cathedrals, and simple parish churches dot the landscape showing Christianity’s long history in England.

In 1532 there was a divorce—two divorces, really. Parliament declared Henry VIII Supreme Head of the Church divorcing the English Church from Rome just as the king divorced his first wife Katherine of Aragon, something the Church in Rome would not grant. Henry VII decided he could have as many wives as he wished and reign over state and church without anyone’s oversight.

Calls for religious change in England and on the Continent had been sounding for a long time. In 1376 John Wycliffe (1330-1384), prominent Oxford theologian and early translator of the Bible in English, called for reform asserting that scripture was the highest authority in Christian doctrine rather than the pope or clergy, that communion bread--while taking on the virtues of Christ, remained bread--and that Christians learned best by hearing and reading the Bible in their own language. By 1517 Martin Luther (1483-1546) had become megaphone for reformation. He picked up earlier calls for scripture as the highest Christian authority over the church officials, for individual salvation by faith alone, and reading the Bible in the spoken language of the people. William Tyndale, another Oxford professor, translated the Bible into English in 1526 while on the Continent and was executed ten years later for it (strangled then burnt). The long and violent schism between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, in all its variation, had begun.  

Wycliffe and Tyndale translated the Bible in English. Luther

in German, Erasmus in Latin.

In 1543 King Henry VII published A necessary doctrine and erudition for any Christian man, set further by the kynges maiestie of Englande, commonly called “The King’s Book.” 

The king embraced the ideals of the reformation to detach from Roman oversight, but he did not affirm the Protestant ideal of freedom of conscience before God. Persons, especially priests, with views that threatened the king/supreme leader of the church would be asked if they affirmed “The King’s Book.” Church councils and religious institution officially disputed doctrine and battled about divine authority while ordinary people decided what to believe and what belief required. 

Anne Askew claimed a faith that differed some from that of her family and King, and it cost her. 

Anne Askew (1521-1546) was born in Lincolnshire to a prominent and wealthy family. She was among the 10% of the population could write in English--more could read. During her early life, Anne read the Bible, probably Tyndale’s version which was illegally circulating. She began to associate with local evangelicals--Protestants who met in Bible studies and advocated preaching outside the established church. When her sister, Martha, died on the verge of marrying Thomas Kyme, Anne’s father required fifteen-year-old Anne to marry him instead. Thomas was a committed Catholic and Anne, an increasingly vocal Protestant.  After bearing two children, the contention between the couple grew, and Thomas threw Anne out of the house. In her early twenties, she traveled to London to seek a divorce on the basis of “scriptural incompatibility.” The divorce was denied and Anne began to refer to herself by her unmarried name and began to distribute Bibles, speak publicly, and meet with Protestants within the English court. 

By this time, Henry VIII was married to his 6^th and last wife, Catherine Parr, a Protestant sympathizer. Henry VIII was a sworn enemy of Martin Luther and did not want his Queen associated with this new brand of Christianity.

Intrigue about Queen Catherine’s beliefs led to suspicion of those in her circle of influence. Anne Askew was arrested and interrogated more than once in the hopes that she would divulge the names of Protestant sympathizers close to the Queen. While imprisoned, a document of her interrogation, purportedly in her own words, was published after her death by John Bale, who added his own commentary which compared Askew to Blandina, a Christian woman martyred in 177.  Anne’s account of her interrogation can be found here: http://anne-askew.humanities.uva.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/First_Examination_Of_Anne_Askew.pdf 

A poem, "The Ballad of Anne Askew" recounts her conversion story and knowledge of her pending martydom.  https://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/16century/topic_3/asballad.htm

Askew’s answers to her interrogators show resolute defiance and clever ability to deflect leading questions. When asked what she said to The Kings Book, she said she had never seen it. When asked if a bit of the communion host fell to the floor and a beast (mouse) ate it did the beast receive God? She replied, since you asked the question perhaps you care enough to answer it. Perhaps the most remarkable part of her defense is her felicity with the scriptures she was not supposed to be reading. Anne was taken to the Tower of London and tortured on the rack. 

By Robert Crowley [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Unable to stand, Anne was bound to the stake with chains alongside three men also accused of heresy in Smithfield, on 16 July 1546. 

Her final prayer recorded in Foxes Book of the Martyrs describes she understood she would die for her beliefs. (A few choice bits are in boldface.)

 "I, Anne Askew, of good memory, although my merciful Father hath given me the bread of adversity, and the water of trouble, yet not so much as my sins have deserved, confess myself here a sinner before the throne of his heavenly Majesty, desiring his forgiveness and mercy. And forasmuch as I am by the law unrighteously condemned for an evil doer concerning opinions, I take the same most merciful God of mine, who hath made both heaven and earth, to record, that I hold no opinions contrary to his most holy word. And I trust in my merciful Lord, who is the giver of all grace, that he will graciously assist me against all evil opinions which are contrary to his blessed verity. For I take him to witness, that I have done, and will, unto my life's end, utterly abhor them to the uttermost of my power.

            "But this is the heresy which they report me to hold: that after the priest hath spoken the words of consecration, there remaineth bread still. They both say, and also teach it for a necessary article of faith, that after those words be once spoken, there remaineth no bread, but even the self-same body that hung upon the cross on Good Friday, both flesh, blood, and bone. To this belief of theirs say I, nay. For then were our common creed false, which saith, that he sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and from thence shall come to judge the quick and the dead. Lo, this is the heresy that I hold, and for it must suffer the death. But as touching the holy and blessed supper of the Lord, I believe it to be a most necessary remembrance of his glorious sufferings and death. Moreover, I believe as much therein as my eternal and only Redeemer Jesus Christ would I should believe.

            "Finally, I believe all those Scriptures to be true, which he hath confirmed with his most precious blood. Yea, and as St. Paul saith, those Scriptures are sufficient for our learning and salvation, that Christ hath left here with us; so that I believe we need no unwritten verities to rule his church with. Therefore look, what he hath said unto me with his own mouth in his holy gospel, that have I, with God's grace, closed up in my heart, and my full trust is, as David saith, that it shall be a lantern to my footsteps.

            "There be some do say, that I deny the eucharist or sacrament of thanksgiving; but those people do untruly report of me. For I both say and believe it, that if it were ordered like as Christ instituted it and left it, a most singular comfort it were unto us all. But as concerning your mass, as it is now used in our days, I do say and believe it to be the most abominable idol that is in the world: for my God will not be eaten with teeth, neither yet dieth he again. And upon these words that I base now spoken, will I suffer death.

  

Anne was officially burnt at the stake for reading the Bible and trusting it to be the supreme guide for her life and for seeing communion as a memorial meal instituted by Christ in the gospels. She was made a public lesson for Protestants. Beware, your beliefs might get you killed. 

 ******

Photo by Christine Anderson 

Margaret Clitherow (1556-1586) is the Catholic converse of Anne Askew. Margaret was born a decade after Anne’s death to a merchant Protestant family. Anne converted to Catholicism in 1574 after her marriage to John Clitherow, a wealthy butcher. Her husband belonged to the state church but had a Catholic brother who was a priest. John paid his wife’s fees and supported her when she was later imprisoned for not attending services at the Cathedral as required by law. Common folk were fined 12 pence for not attending church and 100 for have attended a public Catholic mass. Priests who would not take the oath of supremacy and who continued to arrange for or say mass using the Catholic rite were to be punished by death. From 1549, all churches in England, whether identified as Catholic, Anglican or Puritan were to use the service outlined in the earliest version of the Book of Common Prayer.

A few weeks after reading Anne Askew’s words and seeing her fidelity to faith and trust in the scriptures unto death, I walked into the St Winfred's Catholic Church that stands in the shadows of the Anglican Cathedral at York and read the handwritten list of martyrs associated with the church. There was one woman’s name: Margaret Clitherow.  A walk around the sanctuary led to a statue of her. After reading of her  martyrdom, I lit a candle in her memory. What a terrible story.

Margaret’s home became an underground railroad of sorts for these fugitive priests. She hid them in an underground room and other locations around York. When her eldest child neared adulthood, it was arranged for him to travel to France to train for the priesthood. When this was discovered, her house was raided, the underground room discovered, and she was charged with abetting fugitive priests.

Margaret had three children and was pregnant with a fourth. She chose to remain silent to keep from implicating them. It was decreed that she would be put to death by crushing. The door to her own home was laid on top of her and piled with heavy slabs of rock until she was crushed along with the child she was carrying.

 Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins memorialized her:

Christ lived in Margaret Clitheroe.

She caught the crying of those Three,

The Immortals of the eternal ring,

The Utterer, Uttered, Uttering,

And witness in her place would she.

She not considered whether or no

She pleased the Queen and Council. So

To the death with Margaret Clitheroe!

(To whole poem is here: https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/margaret-clitheroe).

Margaret was crushed for wishing to worship as she believed and for seeking to protect priest who she believed mediated  Christ and the apostolic authority of the church. She also became a public lesson for Catholics. Beware, your beliefs might get you killed.

Religious toleration in England would not officially be declared until more than a century later in 1689. By this time many Puritans—those who wanted to purify the Established church (of its Catholicism) had fled England for other places, including Plymouth in 1620, where we know them as the Thanksgiving Pilgrims. English Catholics who wanted to flee the requirements of the Book of Common Prayer fled to Maryland settled in 1634.  

The lesson I took from my journey down the Thames through York is this: Beware when the government takes sides in the religious lives of its citizenry. The fears of threatened leaders can lead to scapegoating vulnerable people of conscience. History reminds us, that women, even married or pregnant women, who defy social and religious convention are easy targets for social and ecclesial punishment. The Christian call to love one’s neighbor and enemy alike can be conveniently forgotten in the frenzy to maintain political power.