Anne Askew - Legacy

Legacy

She wrote a first-person account of her ordeal and her beliefs, which was published as the Examinations by John Bale, and later in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments of 1563 which proclaims her as a Protestant martyr. The story of Askew's martyrdom was thus written into the Protestant hagiography, but as MacCulloch comments, under a version of her unmarried name (which he attributes to some embarrassment over her desertion of her husband Kyme). He notes that Robert Parsons picked up on this aspect of the story.

Several ballads were written about Askew in the 17th century. As Thomas Fuller described it, "she went to heaven in a chariot of fire". There was a resurgence of interest in her story during Victorian times, and the Bleets company produced an Anne Askew doll complete with rack and stake. One is on show at the Leeds Toy Museum.