The heresy trials of the Reformation era reveal distinctly different approaches for male and female suspects. While male heretics largely challenged the supremacy of the orthodox Church, female heretics were seen to subvert male authority in general. Therefore, securing a woman's obedience to that authority — through ensuring her role as wife or mother — became equivalent to re-establishing her obedience to the Church.
This article focuses on certain accounts detailed in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments. The famous cases of Anne Askew and Katherine Parr are considered beside those of Mrs Prest and Elizabeth Young. All four questionings draw heavily on the traditional arguments (based on Scripture and ‘logic’) that sought to limit the role of laywomen. The debate concerning women preachers is invoked, and issues of women's ‘natural’ inferiority and their inability to comprehend spiritual matters resonate through the records. Preceding the accesssion of Elizabeth as Defensor Fidei, the women's experiences provide an insight into the radical destabilization of authority that occurred during the sixteenth century and that was exacerbated by the infiltration of women in the male sphere of theology.
Tis not a woman's place
To say a word of grace
In Church or in the street:
Behind the spinning wheel is her proper seat.1
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