It was a great vexation to the enemies of the Reformation to see persons of the highest rank almost openly professing the evangelical faith. As they did not dare to attack them, they determined to make a beginning with Anne Askew, and thereby to terrify the rest. She had said one day, 'I would sooner read five lines in the Bible than hear five masses in the church.' On another occasion she had denied the corporal presence of the Saviour in the sacrament. She was sent to prison. When she was taken to Sadlers Hall, the judge, Dare, asked her, 'Do you not believe that the sacrament hanging over the altar was the very body of Christ really?' Anne replied, 'Wherefore was St. Stephen stoned to death?' Dare, doubtless, remembered that Stephen had said, 'I see the Son of man sitting _at the right hand of God_.' From this it followed that He was not in the sacrament. He preferred to answer, 'I can not tell.' It is possible, however, that his ignorance was not feigned. 'No more,' said Anne, 'will I assoil your vain question.' Anne was afterwards taken before the lord-mayor, Sir Martin Bowes, a passionate bigot. He was under-treasurer of the Mint, and in 1550 obtained the king's pardon for all the false money which he had coined. The magistrate gravely asked her whether a mouse, eating the host, received God or no? 'I made no answer, but smiled,' says Anne. The bishop's chancellor, who was present, sharply said to her, 'St. Paul forbade women to speak or to talk of the Word of God.' 'How many women,' said she in reply, 'have you seen go into the pulpit and preach?' 'Never any,' he said. 'You ought not to find fault in poor women, except they have offended the law.' She was unlawfully committed to prison, and for eleven days no one was allowed to see her. At this time she was about twenty-five years of age.