Anne Askew, English author and poet (b. 1520)
Anne Askew (sometimes spelled Ayscough or Ascue; married name Anne Kyme; 1521 – 16 July 1546) was an English writer, poet, and Anabaptist preacher who was condemned as a heretic in England during the reign of Henry VIII of England. She and Margaret Cheyne, wife of Sir John Bulmer, who was similarly tortured and executed after the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1537, are the only women on record known to have been both tortured in the Tower of London and burnt at the stake.
She is also one of the earliest known women poets to compose in the English language and the first Englishwoman to request a divorce, especially as an innocent party on scriptural grounds.