Men now found themselves in a strange and cruel delimma. If it was
dangerous to believe too much, it was equally dangerous to believe too
little. Traitor and heretic were dragged to execution on the same
hurdle; for Henry burned as heretics those who declared their belief
in Protestantism, and hanged or beheaded, as traitors, those who
acknowledged the authority of the Pope and denied the supremacy of the
King (S349).
Thus Anne Askew, a young and beautiful woman, was nearly wrenched
asunder on the rack, in the hope of making her implicate the Queen in
her heresy. She was afterward burned because she insisted that the
bread and wine used in the communion service seemed to her to be
simply bread and wine, and not in any sense the actual body and blood
of Christ, as the King's statute of the Six Articles (S357) solemnly
declared.
On the other hand, the aged Countess of Salisbury suffered for
treason; but with a spirit matching the King's, she refused to kneel
at the block, and told the executioner he must get her gray head off
as best he could.