a city in the land of the Philistines, situated between Azoth and Gaza, upon the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, about 520 furlongs from Jerusalem. The tribe of Judah, after the death of Joshua, took the city of Askelon, Judges i, 18, being one of the five governments belonging to the Philistines. The place at present is in ruins. ASMONÆANS, a name given to the Maccabees, the descendants of Mattathias. After the death of Ezra and Nehemiah, the Jews were governed by their high priest, in subjection, however, to the Persian kings, to whom they paid tribute; but with full enjoyment of their liberties, civil and religious. Nearly three centuries of prosperity ensued, until they were cruelly oppressed by Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, when they were compelled to take up arms in their own defence. Under the able conduct of Judas, surnamed Maccabeus, and his valiant brothers, the Jews maintained a religious war for twenty-six years with five successive kings of Syria; and after destroying upwards of two hundred thousand of their best troops, the Maccabees finally established the independence of their own country, and the aggrandisement of their family. This illustrious house, whose princes united the regal and pontifical dignity in their own persons, administered the affairs of the Jews during a period of a hundred and twenty-six years; until, disputes arising between Hyrcanus II, and his brother Aristobulus, the latter was defeated by the Romans, who captured Jerusalem, and reduced Judea to a military province, B. C. 59.

ASKEW, or Ascue, Anne, one of the numerous sufferers for the cause of the Reformation in the reign of Henry VIII., was a lady of great worth and. beauty, of a good family in Lincolnshire, and in correspondence with Queen Catherine Parr and the chief ladies of the court. At first a Roman Catholic, she had gradually become convinced of the falsity of transubstantiation; and her husband, irritated at her change of religious opinions, compelled her to leave his house. On coming to London to seek for a divorce she was arrested, and interrogated by Chancellor Wriothesley and Bishop Bonner, at the instigation of whom, under threats of torture, she signed a qualified recantation. She was imprisoned, and wrote to the king, says Hume, “that as to the Lord’s Supper she believed as much as Christ himself had said of it, and as much of His divine doctrine as the Catholic church had required.” But while she could not be brought to acknowledge the king’s explications, this declaration availed her nothing, and was rather regarded as a fresh insult. She was cruelly racked in the presence, and it was said by the hand, of the chancellor himself, in order to extort confession of those ladies about court with whom she corresponded. Her fortitude and fidelity probably saved the lives of the queen and others. She disclosed nothing, although her limbs were so dislocated by the rack that, when condemned to be burnt alive she could not stand, and was carried in a chair to Smith-field, where on 16th July 1546, she and four others underwent this terrible mode of execution with undaunted courage.