A New General Biographical Dictionary Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1857 Excerpt: ...as she was the daughter of Sir William Ascough, of Kelsey, in the county of Lincoln, of an ancient family at that place. This lady has obtained a place in most catalogues of those who have been eminent in their day, by the few devotional writings which she left behind; but more by her heroic endurance of those extreme sufferings to which her constancy in the profession of the reformed religion exposed her. It was her fortune to find in the writers of her own and the following age, those who highly extolled her as an example of almost unparalleled virtue; and, on the other hand, those who did what could be done to deface the beauty of her character and conduct. We shall endeavour to state the facts of her life as they are to be collected from the writers of those times, especially Bale, Fox, and Sanders; using for the purpose, the abstract of their accounts as given by Fuller in his Church History, book v. p. 242, and the additions made to it by Ballard. It seems to be admitted by all, that while very young she made an unfortunate marriage with a member of the family of Kyme, an ancient house in Lincolnshire, whose wardship Sir William Ascough, the father, had obtained with a view that he should marry another of his daughters. But that daughter dying after the contract entered into, and probably after the betrothment, Sir William determined that his daughter Anne should become the wife of Kyme, in the stead of the elder daughter who died. Marriages thus made were not unfrequent in those times, nor necessarily unhappy; but it appears that this was an unfortunate marriage. What the precise grounds of disagreement were there are no means of knowing, nor under what circumstances it was that she left her husband's house. One party state that she was driven from i...