“The unhappy lady was now carried to a dungeon, and laid on the rack in the presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir A. Knyvett, and Wriothesley, the Chancellor, Rich, a creature of Bonner, and a secretary, sitting at her side to take down her words. 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, revolting at such cruelty, insisted on her release from the dreadful machine. It was but 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 without support. Wriothesley hastened to Westminster to complain to the King of the Lieutenant’s lenity; but the latter, getting into his barge with a favourable tide, arrived before him, obtained immediate audience, and told his tale so honestly and with such earnestness, that Henry’s hard heart was softened for once, and approving his conduct he dismissed him with favour. A stronger reason for this may have been that the rack was regarded with such horror by the people as to be applied only in secrecy; and had Anne expired under it, and the fact became known, some violent outbreak might have been apprehended in the City. 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. One of the peers, learning that there was some gunpowder about the stakes, became frightened lest any accident should happen to himself from the faggots being blown into the air; but the Earl of Bedford assuring him that no such chance could occur, and that it was only to hasten the deaths of the sufferers, he remained looking on with the same barbarous indifference as the brutal mob who had assembled to witness the dreadful spectacle.” [Illustration: _Traitors’ Gate, from the Bloody Tower_] Anne Askew’s fellow-sufferers were named John Lascels (? Lascelles), John Adams, and Nicholas Beleinian; there is a woodcut of their martyrdom in Foxe’s book.