ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the "time of Anne Ascue", at the end of Henry VIII's reign, and then describes the stories of several people who underwent scourging during examinations for heresy. In the first two accounts, Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, receives mention, but plays only a minor role, stopping to peek into a prison cell to taunt a printer's apprentice jailed for publishing a book called Antichrist. The woodcut illustration has a means of challenging Bonner's claim to sanctity: its representation of the bishop flogging the prisoner poses him as executioner rather than ecclesiastic. The image of Bonner disrobed underscores the excess of violence in his treatment of his prisoners. Foxe portrays the heretic hunters in his text as men who pretend that torture is a legitimate method of interrogation, when in fact it is an outlet for their frustration at the moral fortitude of their prisoners and an expression of their sadistic zest for inflicting pain.
