ABSTRACT
In early 1545, during a power struggle between traditionalists and reformers in King Henry VHI’s government, Anne Askew attracted the attention of court conservatives including Edward Bonner, Bishop of London, and Ste phen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. Suspected of heresy, she was arrested, imprisoned, and examined.1 She was released but later arraigned in June 1546 on heresy charges and again underwent interrogation, culminating in her no torious torture at the rack. Interrogators repeatedly asked about her denial of transubstantiation, a doctrine upheld by the 1539 Act of Six Articles.2 She was also asked whether the Duchess of Suffolk, the Countesses of Sussex and Hertford, Lady Denny, and Lady Fitzwilliams, all important court figures, shared her convictions.3 Askew foiled the traditionalists’ aims by keeping si-
1 . The date of her arrest was March 1545 (new style). Askew was likely also ar rested in June 1545 but was released after no witnesses appeared against her. Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle o f England During the Reigns o f the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, ed. William Douglas Hamilton, London 1875, 1:155. Askew does not mention this arrest in her account, though John Bale refers to her "other knowne handelynges” (13). For the chronology of events, see Elaine Beilin’s introduction to her edition, The Examinations o f Anne Askew, Oxford 1996, pp.xx-xxii. Citations of Askew’s work and of Bale’s commentary are to this edition.
