Elizabeth Barton

1506 - 1534

The Holy Maid of Kent

Biography• Elizabeth Barton was an English Catholic Nun. She was executed as a result of her prophecies

against the marriage of King and Anne Boleyn, which the Pope tried to stop.

• 1525, a young servant girl by the name of Elizabeth Barton fell ill whilst working in the house of her master in the village of Aldington in Kent. With her throat swollen and barely able to walk she lay ill for seven months. The doctors that were called to her bedside were baffled by her condition. For long periods at a time she was totally immobile and appeared to be in a trance-like state. She soon began to have clairvoyant visions and claimed to be able to see souls in the afterlife and was in direct communication with God. It also seemed that she was able to speak without moving her lips. The words, it was said, emerged from her body as if the voice within her was of another.

• Her condition soon came to the attention of William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who sent an Episcopal Commission to investigate her case. They found her to be neither a dissembler nor unorthodox in her beliefs. She spoke only of the Mass and Confession, they said. Cleared of any wrongdoing she was carried from the Chapel at Court-le-Street in triumph by the crowd of admirers that had gathered to hear the verdict, miraculously cured, or so it seemed.

Motives for Opposition• In January, 1528, Henry VIII announced his intention to

divorce his wife Katherine of Aragon and marry the notorious courtesan Anne Boleyn. Katherine was hugely popular with the common people whilst Anne Boleyn was regularly referred to as that ” Goggle-Eyed Whore.”At their second meeting Elizabeth spoke to the King of his proposed marriage to Anne Boleyn. She told him that should he persist ” he should no longer be King of his Realm and die a Villains death.” That he should be aware of the dire consequences that would follow. God had spoken to her and said that the marriage was blasphemous in His eyes and that Henry would be dead within one month of taking his marriage vows.

Form of Opposition

• She might nevertheless have continued with her prophecies in relative peace and security until her death had she not chosen to turn her attention to political matters. However, when the king announced his intention of divorcing Catherine of Aragon and marrying Anne Boleyn, Barton became a prophet of doom, threatening a calamitous outcome to the king’s matrimonial machinations. She predicted that the king would die within the next year if he went through with the marriage.

Government’s response• This drew the attention of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of

Canterbury, who had her arrested and examined under torture. The arrest was greeted by widespread protest but Cranmer defused dissent by spreading rumours that Barton was engaged in sexual relations with a number of priests. After extracting a confession that her visions were falsified, Cranmer put Barton on trial before Parliament where she was convicted of treason and hanged at Tyburn. She confessed almost straight away to counterfeiting her visions and revelations and was condemned, after the case against her had been elaborately prepared and publicised, to be hanged, along with a number of her supporters. The sentence was carried out in 1534.

How effective was their opposition?

• As her fame spread, she gained a group of disciples, who propagandised her words. In 1527, she entered a convent, but far from shutting herself off from the world, gave personal interviews to state dignitaries. She spoke personally to Cardinal Wolsey, the leading churchman of England, and even had a brief appointment with Henry VIII. Her opposition was quite effective as she was very famous in the English Realm, as she had gained notoriety for being ‘holy’ and devout, and unbeknownst to the general public, a possible hidden schizophrenic.

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