Faith On The Line - Stress, Stress Go Away Vol 19 | Page 40

ANNE ASKEW - Continued from page 39

Richard Rich, who had accompanied him, and who was afterwards lord
chancellor, to do likewise. Then these brutal men themselves seized
hold of the levers. The chancellor, pausing a moment, asked Anne if she
was with child.

upon her fear of death; but this was not so.

She did not fear death, but she wished to have justice done her. She
felt that the law was being violated in her case, and that her rights as
an English woman were being trampled underfoot by the myrmidons
of the Pope, and she was brave enough to contend for them to the last. “Ye shall not need to spare for that,” replied the heroic woman. “Do your
wills upon me.”
In a letter to her old tutor, John Lascels, who suffered with her, she
The chancellor and Rich then applied themselves to their horrid task.
thus meets this charge of cowardice: “O friend, most dearly beloved
The victim on the rack was a woman whose helplessness and gentleness
in God, I marvel not a little what should move you to judge in me so
might have moved any hearts but those hardened by the religion of
slender a faith as to fear death, which is the end of all misery. In the
Rome. They were merciless, and with their own hands they stretched her
Lord, I desire of you not to believe of me such wickedness; for I doubt
body until her joints were pulled asunder, and her bones almost broken.
not, but God will perform His work in me, like He hath begun.”
The Romanists now began to annoy her with efforts to induce her to
recant. They sent to her Nicholas Shaxton, the apostate ex-Bishop of
Salisbury, and others, who did their utmost, by promises of mercy and
freedom, to move her. She remained firm, however, and told Shaxton
to his face that it had been good for him if he had never been born.
When her visitors left her she was sent to the Tower of London--the
day being the 13th of July--where, at three o’clock in the afternoon,
she underwent a new examination. This examination was conducted
by the Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, who wished to compel her to say
something that would criminate the queen, or the Duchess of Suffolk,
the Countess of Sussex, the Countess of Hertford, Lady Denny, or Lady
Fitzwilliams, all of whom the Romanists were anxious to destroy.
Some of these ladies had been very kind to her since her
imprisonment. The chancellor plied her with questions, but could
discover nothing to the prejudice of these ladies. He then ordered
her to be stretched upon the rack, in order to force her through sheer
suffering to say something that he might twist into an accusation
against the ladies mentioned. She was fastened to the rack, and the
levers were turned, causing her the keenest sufferings. She bore the
cruel torture without a cry or a murmur.

She endured it all, however, and to the end refused to say one word
which might compromise any one who had befriended her, or whom
she had reason to think held the same faith as herself. Nothing but the
fear that she would die under the torture made these wretches desist.
As soon as she was released from the rack, she swooned from the
awful agony.
Restoratives were applied and her consciousness returned. Then the
brutal chancellor kept her sitting for two hours on the bare floor, while
he urged her to renounce her faith. After this, she says in her touching
narrative of her sufferings, “was I brought to a house, and laid in a bed,
with as weary and painful bones as ever had patient Job; I thank my
Lord God therefore.”
Her words do not convey a fair idea of her condition. The torture had
deprived her of the use of her limbs, which had been pulled apart, and
her sufferings were intense. Her condition was such that she could have
lived a short time at the best, for it was not possible for a human body
to rally from injuries such as she had received.
The lieutenant of the Tower set out for the King’s presence immediately
upon the departure of the chancellor, who had threatened him with
the royal displeasure for refusing to continue the torture. He reached
the palace before the chancellor, and gave the king an exact account of
the affair, declaring that he had not the heart to torture a poor woman
when it was useless, without express orders from his majesty. Henry
approved his conduct, and sharply censured the chancellor. There the
matter ended, and he allowed the priests and their followers to work
their will on the poor victim whom they had already brought down to
the gates of death.

BIBLE

Trivia

4
40

How many books are there in
the Old Testament?
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CORNER

The chancellor was furious at not being able to extort anything from
her, and ordered the torture to be increased; but the lieutenant of
the Tower, Sir Anthony Knevet, ordered the jailors to release her.
Wriothesley angrily commanded the lieutenant to obey him, but Sir
Anthony told him that he commanded in the Tower, and reminded
the chancellor that he had not H