ecclesiastical, went with them. The King had not been too busy with ridding himself of enemies, or supposed enemies, to neglect other things. He had married and divorced Anne of Cleves, and had taken Katherine Howard to be his Queen. But her fate was not long delayed, and another royal head was brought to the axe on Tower Green. Before her death she had asked that the block might be brought to her cell in order that she might learn how to lay her head upon it, and this strange request was granted. Lady Rochford, the Queen’s companion, was executed on the Green after her mistress had suffered. An eye-witness of the executions has left it on record that both victims made “the moost godly and chrystian end that ever was heard tell of, I thynke sins the world’s creation.” Katherine Howard was only twenty-two years old when the Tower claimed her life. Many of her relatives were imprisoned at the same time, among them being her grandmother, the Duchess of Norfolk, the Countess of Bridgewater, Lord and Lady William Howard, and Thomas, Duke of Norfolk. It is rather startling to find that a prisoner in the Tower could “die for joy” upon hearing that the charge brought against him was not proven. This singular death released the troubled soul of Viscount Lisle from the walls of his dungeon and from the trials of this mortal life, in the year that Queen Katherine was brought to the Green. From execution we turn to torture. Anne Askew, “an ardent believer in the Reformed faith,” was cast into the Tower for denying the doctrine of Transubstantiation. In an account of her sufferings by Lord de Ros we are told that “the unhappy lady was carried to a dungeon and laid on the rack in the presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower and Chancellor Wriothesley. But when she endured the torture without opening her lips in reply to the Chancellor’s questions, he became furious, and seizing the wheel himself, strained it with all his force till Knyvett [the Lieutenant], revolting at such cruelty, insisted on her release from the dreadful machine. It was but just in time to save her life, for she had twice swooned, and her limbs had been so stretched and her joints so injured, that she was never again able to walk.... She was shortly afterwards carried to Smithfield and there burnt to ashes, together with three other persons, for the same cause, in the presence of the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Thomas Wriothesley, the Lord Mayor, and a vast concourse of people.” Religious bigotry, alas, is still with us, but men have saner notions to-day as to the value of mere religious opinions, and poor Anne had the misfortune to live in a ruder age than ours. But her sufferings are not forgotten; religious tyranny has lost the power to send to the rack and the stake, and to her, and all who suffered, be due honour given.