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Historical person
1521–1546
Anne Askew was an English poet, Protestant reformer and religious witness who openly challenged traditional Catholic doctrines during the final years of Henry VIII’s reign. Arrested and interrogated for her beliefs, she refused to recant or to implicate reform-minded women close to Queen Catherine Parr.
In 1546 she was illegally tortured on the rack despite her gentle birth and then burned at Smithfield, leaving written accounts that made her a lasting Protestant martyr. Anne Askew was born in Lincolnshire and died in Smithfield.
C. J. Sansom’s Lamentation makes Anne Askew’s execution a warning of the danger facing evangelical reformers at Henry VIII’s court as Matthew Shardlake investigates the disappearance of Katherine Parr’s religious manuscript. Sandra Byrd’s The Secret Keeper places Askew within the reformist networks and heresy politics surrounding Parr and Thomas Seymour. Alison Weir’s Katharine Parr uses Askew’s interrogation and death to show how closely the queen’s own religious interests could be associated with beliefs the regime was prepared to punish as treasonous or heretical.
Series
The Shardlake Series follows Matthew Shardlake, a London barrister with scoliosis whose legal work repeatedly draws him into murder investigations and affairs of state between 1537 and 1549. He begins as an idealistic supporter of religious reform and an agent of Thomas Cromwell, but the violence of the…
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Tudor Ladies in Waiting presents the Tudor court through women who serve queens at moments of religious and dynastic crisis. Margaret Lee, the fictional Juliana St John and Helena Snakenborg provide close viewpoints on Anne Boleyn, Katherine Parr and Elizabeth I, linking public politics to friendship, household service…
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The Six Tudor Queens sequence retells the lives of Henry VIII’s wives through six full-length novels. Twelve companion stories shift attention to relatives, servants, artists and courtiers affected by the same events, while Six Tudor Queens: Writing a New Story explains the project’s historical method. In the Shadow…
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