Elizabeth Barton: The Holy Maid of Kent

On Easter Day, 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.

The fit and healthy Elizabeth now became a nun at the Benedictine Convent of St Sepulchre’s. But here her trances and revelations only seemed to intensify. Though her supposedly divine messages remained theologically orthodox, they were being relayed at a time when there was about to be a profound shift in English religious thinking. Even so, she may well have been left alone had her predictions not begun to impinge upon the realm of politics.

Still by 1528, she had become something of a Tudor celebrity. So famous was she that she had a private meeting with the Chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. He was impressed by this simple woman of little education. So much so that he was to arrange two meetings for her with the King himself. It was at the second of these meetings, however, that everything was to change for Elizabeth.

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.