“The common people of England,” it was said in derision, “were wiser than the wisest of the nation; for here the very women and shopkeepers were able to judge of predestination, and determine what laws were to be made concerning Church government.” Anne Askew was arrested in March, 1545, and brought before Christopher Dare at Sadlers’ Hall, Cheapside, on the charge of denying transubstantiation, the eighteenth article of the statute. She was afterwards examined by the Lord Mayor, by the Bishop of London’s chaplain, by Bishop Bonner, by Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, none of whom could shake her convictions or induce her to retract, and she was accordingly burnt at the stake. Anne Askew was of good social position, the daughter of a knight, Sir William Askew, and a maid of honour to Queen Catherine Parr. It was not only a rapt enthusiasm and ecstatic fervour which sustained women in the hour of martyrdom. There is plenty of evidence of that comprehending courage which could anticipate and prepare for death with the same calmness as for any ordinary event of life. The dying speeches of the women who suffered from the merciless brutality of Judge Jeffreys are very remarkable. That of the aged Lady Alicia de Lisle, who was barbarously executed in 1685, after the battle of Sedgmoor, for sheltering fugitives, is one of the most notable-- “Gentlemen, Friends, and Neighbours, it may be expected that I should say something at my death, and in order thereunto I shall acquaint you that my birth and education were both near this place, and that my parents instructed me in the fear of God, and I now die of the Reformed Protestant Religion; believing that if ever popery should return into this nation, it would be a very great and severe judgment.... The crime that was laid to my charge was for entertaining a Nonconformist Minister and others in my house; the said minister being sworn to have been in the late Duke of Monmouth’s Army. * * * * * “I have no excuse but surprise and fear, which I believe my Jury must make use of to excuse their verdict to the world. I have been also told that the Court did use to be of counsel for the prisoner; but instead of advice, I had evidence against me from thence; which, though it were only by hearing, might possibly affect my Jury; my defence being such as might be expected from a weak woman; but, such as it was, I did not hear it repeated again to the Jury, which, as I have been informed, is usual in such cases. However, I forgive all the world, and therein all those that have done me wrong.” Another victim, Mrs. Gaunt of Wapping, who was burnt in the same year for a somewhat similar offence, wrote the day before her martyrdom--