204
REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.
[ch. 23.
questions which were submitted to him unless he had a promise of the King's protection;[1] but while in prison he collected his courage, and wrote a deliberate denial of the real presence.[2] Three other persons were at the same time convicted of the same offence. Nicholas Belemian, a Shropshire priest, John Adams, a tailor, and a lady, the tragedy of whose martyrdom, being visible in all its details, overshadows the fate of her fellow-sufferers.
June.Anne, daughter of Sir William Ascue,[3] was born at Kelsey, in Lincolnshire. In her early youth or womanhood she must have remembered the rebellion in which her father was, perhaps, unwillingly implicated, and she must have lived surrounded by the passions which it had roused. She was married to a violent conservative, a gentleman named Kyme; but from some cause she was unable to follow in the track of her husband and father; she became a Protestant, and was disowned and disclaimed by them; and then we find that she was to be seen from time to time- ↑ Lascelles will not answer to that part of his conference with Crome that toucheth Scripture matters without he have the King's Majesty's express commandment, with his protection; for he saith it is neither wisdom or equity that he should kill himself.—State Papers, vol. i. p. 850.
- ↑ Foxe, vol. v. p. 551.
- ↑ The authority for the remarkable and otherwise incredible circumstances of Anne Ascue's persecution is a narrative, or rather a series of fragments, written by herself in the intervals of her harassing examinations, at the request of her friends These were printed by Foxe; though he does not say by what means they came into his hands, there is no reason to believe them forgeries; and the utmost value which can belong to internal evidence must be allowed to their unaffected simplicity.
