SOURCE: Kesselring, Krista. “Representation of Women in Tudor Historiography: John Bale and the Rhetoric of Exemplarity.” Renaissance and Reformation 22, no. 2 (spring 1998): 41-61.

In the following essay, Kesselring examines the importance of John Bale's writings in helping advocate an active political and religious role for women at the time of the Reformation.

John Bale, a Carmelite friar turned reformer, appropriated the writings of two women for the uses of protestant polemic. These works, Anne Askew's account of the interrogations that would lead to her death at the stake, and the Princess Elizabeth's translation of The Mirror or Glass of the Sinful Soul, have received attention as two of only a small body of published writings by Tudor women.¹ Bale's own additions to these works have, however, received much less notice.² His introductory comments, “elucidations” and conclusions to these two pieces present their female authors as role models for the...