It may also be noted, in passing, that while the Roman Church proclaimed the inferiority of women, and put a low value on their intellectual powers, it treated their deviations from its doctrine with the same rigour as if they had been endowed with the superior attributes of the other sex. Women’s weakness, mental and moral, availed them nothing. They were subjected to interrogatories as searching and tortures as severe as men. No excuse was made for their want of reason and understanding, and the greatest pains were taken to convince them of error. During the Lollard persecutions in 1389, an anchoress known to be tainted with the new opinions was carried from Leicester to Wolverhampton, was closely immured and examined by no less a magnate than Courtney, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, either by threat or persuasion, prevailed upon this erring sister to recant her heresy. In 1459 the monks of Bath were greatly excited by hearing that a woman, an inhabitant of the city, had spoken slightingly of the-- “holy mummeries that were carried on in the Church of Bath, and the pilgrimages made by the devotees to the different sacred edifices in the neighbourhood. This was wounding the monks in the tenderest part; and as the offence militated directly against their influence and interest, it demanded a severe and exemplary punishment. A proper representation of this heinous crime being made to the ecclesiastical court at Wells, it was decreed that she should recant in the great church at Bath, before all the congregation, the heretical and disrespectful words she had spoken against the superstitions of the latter city and some neighbouring places, which had been to this effect: that it was but waste to give to the Holy Trinity at Bath, and equally absurd to go on pilgrimages to St. Osmund at Salisbury; and that she wished the road thither was choaked up with (bremmel) brambles and thorns to (lette) prevent people from going thither.”[52] The questioning to which the Protestant martyrs of the sixteenth century were subjected was very minute. With a notable heretic like Anne Askew, who was burnt at Smithfield, July 16, 1546, the dignitaries of the Church spent hours of discussion day after day, and women who were of no renown whatever were cross-examined in much detail. Among the Roman Catholics women of the trading class suffered persecution because they could not bring themselves to acquiesce in the new form of worship. The wife of a miller in All Hallows parish refused to go to church because, she said, there was “neither priest, altar, nor sacrifice;” and many women who showed a similar spirit may be found among the wives of tailors, locksmiths, tanners, and others of similar standing. Pressure was put upon tradesmen, yeomen, and husbandmen to ensure the conformity of their wives.