or ASQUE, ANNE, one of the numerous victims to the cause of the Reformation in the year preceding the death of the tyrant Henry VIII., was a lady of great merit and beauty, of a good family in Lincolnshire, and in correspondence with Queen Catherine Parr, and the chief ladies of the court. She had studied the Scriptures, and denied the real presence in the Eucharist, for which a bigoted husband expelled her from his house. On coming to London she was arrested, and interrogated by Chancellor Wriothesley and Bishop Bonner; at the instigation of whom, under threats of torture, she signed a qualified recantation. She was imprisoned, and wrote to the king, says Hume, "that as to the Lord's Supper she believed as much as Christ himself had said of it, and as much of his divine doctrine as the Catholic Church had required. But while she could not be brought to acknowledge the king's explications, this declaration availed her nothing, and was rather regarded as a fresh insult." She was most cruelly racked in the presence, and it was said by the hand, of the chancellor himself, in order to extort confession of those ladies about court with whom she corresponded. Her fortitude and fidelity probably saved the life of the queen and others. She disclosed nothing, although her limbs were so dislocated by the rack that when condemned to be burnt alive she could not stand, and was carried in a chair to Smithfield, where, on 16th July 1546, she underwent this terrible mode of execution with undaunted courage, along with four other victims of an atrocious tyranny.