At the tender age of eighteen, Henry, son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, became Henry VIII, king of England. The year was 1509. Henry, a rather obstinate young man, succeeded his father to the throne and married Catherine of Aragon, his dead brother's widow. Autocratic, egotistic and pleasure-seeking, Henry had been raised as a Roman Catholic and was content to remain a true son of that church — content, that is, until he bumped his self-seeking nose against that of the pope. The pope, Leo X, forbad him something you see, and that something was a divorce.

More than anything else Henry wanted a son. He and Catherine had been blessed with a daughter. Other children had lived briefly only to die before they were toddlers. At this time, Anne Boleyn, a young woman at court, caught Henry's fancy. He wanted marriage with her, legal marriage, so that any heirs she might produce would secure his crown and his kingdom. But the pope, although he was wheedled, cajoled and threat­ened, would not be persuaded to grant a divorce. Henry desper­ately needed to find a way to legitimize a divorce and remar­riage in the eyes of the people. Henry was no novice in the arena of theology. At the age of thirty he had written a hefty document entitled Defense of the Seven Sacraments — a rebut­tal against Luther's stand. The pope had honored him for this defense of the Church and had bestowed on him the title "Defender of the Faith", (a title still used today by English rulers). But a few years later, thwarted in his marriage desires, Henry turned his theology towards the growing Protestant tendency within his realm. He found Tyndale's thoughts on a Christian prince being a ruler within his own domain very expedient and the English Parliament began to legislate against Roman Catholic clergy. There were attacks on the privi­leges of the Church and if a clergyman was accused of something, he was to be tried, not before the Church, but before a civil court. And, signif­icantly, no papal dispensation could be used any longer by the clergy in their defense.

The whole religious-politi­cal status quo of England was in the process of changing. Understandably, the Roman Catholic Church was up in arms against Protestant infiltration — an infil­tration which was growing steadily and solidly on English soil. This was the decidedly charged atmosphere in which a young girl by the name of Elizabeth Barton was brought up.

Elizabeth Barton was born in 1506, most likely in the village of Aldington, about twelve miles from Canterbury. Who her parents were is not known but her surname suggests that her ancestors had earned their living managing church lands. (Bertonarius was a Middle Age term used for manager of church lands.) Aldington belonged to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Perhaps Elizabeth was an orphan for she is record­ed to be working on the farm of the bertonarius of Aldington at that time, one Thomas Cobb. Possibly she was a poor relation to Cobb, working for her keep, but that is conjecture.

During the sixteenth century, work on a Kentish farm meant long hours and a strong back. For the women there were hours upon hours of brewing, baking, laundering, preserving, jam­ming and jelling — for the men there was the spitting and turn­ing of the soil, flaying and paunching of stock, branding and gelding, grooming and har­nessing, seeding and harvesting — an endless series of tasks for servants young and old, male, and female. Travel away from the farm took days, through bush and briar with but few roads to choose. When Aldington servants or villagers did travel, they were faced with uncertainties: horses went lame, outlaws pursued and beggars and lepers met them at every turn of the path. It was a diffi­cult life, especially for the poor. Those who were not hardy died; many who dwelt in the cottages surrounding Aldington had scurvy; women died in child­birth; and ague and sweats were a common curse because of the rotting materials in many cot­tages.

Elizabeth Barton was fortu­nate. She was housed and slept in the attic of Cobb's Kentish farmhouse. Although it was a cold place in the winter and a hot one in the summer, the posi­tion gave her constant food and shelter. Through the cracks in the tiles on the rafters, the stars could be seen. The attic ran the length of the house and was floored with thick planks. It was divided in the middle by a parti­tion made of cow-dung plaster. In this partition was a wooden door. On one side the male ser­vants slept and on the other the female servants. The older women had truckle beds but the younger ones had to make do with straw on the floor. Though words might be exchanged between the male and female servants as they lay in bed, gen­erally some reliable older woman latched the wooden door and made sure there were no unchaste dalliances between the sexes.

In 1525, when she was nineteen years old, Elizabeth became ill. One Edward Thwaites, a wealthy Justice of the Peace, records: "About the time of  Easter, in the sixteenth year of the reign of Henry VIII, (spring 1525), it happened that a cer­tain maiden named Elizabeth Barton (then servant to one Thomas Cobb of the Parish of Aldington) was touched with a great infirmity in her body, which did ascend at divers times up into her throat, and swelled greatly; during the time where­of she seemed to be in grievous pain, in so much as a man would have thought that she had suffered the pangs of death itself until the disease descended and fell down into the body again."

Elizabeth was nursed, not in the attic which was her proper bedroom, but downstairs in that part of the house which was occupied by Thomas Cobb and his family The rea­son for this is not recorded but it must be assumed that she was either well-liked by the master and his wife, or that she was somewhat unusual, enjoyed some measure of respect and was thus guarded with care. Thomas Thwaites continues his narrative of Elizabeth's illness in this wise: "Thus Elizabeth continued by fits, the space of seven months and more, and at the last, in the month of November, 1525, (at  which time a young child of her master's lay desperately sick in a cradle by her) she, being vexed with the former disease, asked with great pangs and groaning whether the child were yet departed this life or no; and when the women that attended upon them both in their sickness, answered no, she replied that it should anon. Which word was no sooner uttered, but the child fetched a great sigh and withal the soul departed out of the body with it."

For some reason Elizabeth's words concerning the very ill child were taken to be prophet­ic. She was said to have been in a trance when she spoke them and those who cared for her lis­tened curiously as to whether or not she might speak again con­cerning other matters. She did not disappoint them.

First a word concerning the closed spiritual milieu in which Elizabeth had been brought up. Her master, Thomas Cobb, was a devout Roman Catholic. To the right of his bedroom, on the landing of the second floor, was a rectangular recess in the plas­ter. This was known as the pray­ing cross and this was also the place where domestic prayers were held — nightly prayers before the household retired. Thomas Cobb was a man of solid Roman Catholic conven­tional piety, not at all swayed by the Protestant literature which was being strewn about the English countryside. He set store by good works, by alms­giving, by prayers for the dead and many other Roman Catholic norms. As he required those who worked for him to be of the same mind, Elizabeth was immersed in a strong Roman Catholic climate. That is not to say, however, that she was unaware of the Protestant views put out by Tyndale and Luther. Subject to the spiritual guidance of the Aldington priest, a Richard Master, a clever and educated Cambridge man, she was constantly taught that Protestants went to hell.

It is very likely that Elizabeth had some form of epilepsy. Describing her paroxysms a cer­tain Morrison writes (in 1537): "Afflicted by chronic illness... her face grows pale, her limbs tremble, her whole body shakes and her legs soon give way under her weight. The unhappy girl falls, her mouth gapes so horribly, it is a wonder she does not dislocate her jaw."

Having "foretold" the Cobb baby's death, Elizabeth was now regarded as somewhat of a wonder and was aware of this. She began having clair­voyant speeches as she returned to consciousness after her fits. She spoke of heaven, hell and purgatory and of the joys and sorrows of those who had died. She also manifested bivocalism.

A passage from a letter written by Archbishop Cranmer, using Thwaites as a source, says: "... a voice heard speaking within her belly... her lips not greatly moving; she all that while con­tinuing... in a trance. The which voice, when it told anything of the joys of heaven, it spake so sweetly and heavenly that every man was ravished with the hearing thereof. And contrary, when it told anything of hell, it spake so horribly and terribly that it put the hearers in a great fear."

There was, indeed, no doubt to any of those living at Aldington and in the surrounding country­side that there was something unusual about Elizabeth. The Roman Catholics began to call her God's revelation but the Protestants, Tyndale in particu­lar, called her obnoxious and a demoniac.        

"...inasmuch as the Maid of Kent was inspired by the Holy Ghost, by their own confession, whence came that stopping of her breath, those grievous pangs, that tormenting, disfigur­ing, drawing her mouth awry, and that fearful and terrible countenance?"

Tyndale's work had just begun to appear in print in England. His translation of the New Testament into English had of late been smuggled into his homeland from Germany. Why was he so hard on a young girl afflicted with seeming epilepsy?

The reason Tyndale was so opposed to Elizabeth Barton was that she stood for every­thing the Reformation con­demned. Elizabeth preached, in her fits, the hearing of masses. In Catholic doctrine the mass is a repeat of the very sacrifice offered by Christ on Calvary. Tyndale explicitly condemned this doctrine. The sacrifice on Calvary, he said, was a com­plete act. It was final and Roman Catholic mass is nothing but a denial of the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ and a form of idolatry.

Elizabeth recommended con­fession to priests. She passion­ately maintained in her dis­courses that Christ had delegat­ed His powers of absolution to the priests. Tyndale said, "Every man is a priest and we need no other priest to be a mean," that is to mediate.

Elizabeth was fervent in her espousal of prayer to Mary and other saints. She called them God's friends who could help others in their struggle by pray­ing for them. She recommended devotion and prayers to them, and dedication of churches in their honor. Tyndale said, "To build a church in honor of Mary, or any other saint, is in vain, they cannot help thee, they are not thy friends."

Elizabeth preached the effica­cy of good works. They, she said, were meritorious, especial­ly pilgrimages to holy places, and helped a pilgrim towards salvation as well as helping souls of relations and friends beyond the grave. As well, prayers for the dead assisted them in their journey to heaven. Trentals, for example, men­tioned by Elizabeth in her visions, were held up as being especially helpful. (Trentals were a series of thirty masses said over a month for the repose and salvation of someone who had just died.) Tyndale coun­tered: "All that thinketh that their good works help anything or profit anything to get the gift of salvation, they blaspheme against God, and rob God of His honor... faith alone doth justify us."

Elizabeth taught purgatory which she called the finishing school in which the stains of original sin, or bad habits and wicked deeds are polished away to make a perfect soul. Only people who have no redeeming virtue, she said, are consigned to the eternal banishment of hell — hell with no escape. Everyone, on the other hand, who has ever made the smallest effort to be good, will ultimately reach heaven. It is only a question of time. Tyndale dismissed purga­tory as unscriptural, the Pope's invention, and said, "To believe in Christ maketh sure inheri­tance with Jesus Christ."

Elizabeth continued to live with the Cobbs and was permitted to eat with the family. A canonical commission had been set up. This group of priests had exam­ined the girl and pronounced her sound in Roman Catholic ortho­doxy. To celebrate the happy outcome of the commission a thanksgiving service was set up at a nearby chapel. Thousands of people, lords and ladies as well as commoners, attended this celebration as Elizabeth was now something of an oracle. As she was laid before the image of Mary in the chapel, Elizabeth had a fit which lasted some three hours. At the close of this seizure she spoke, through her belly. Exalting heaven and speaking terribly of hell, she put her hearers in great fear. She also confirmed many Roman Catholic doctrines. After this she stood up and said that she had been healed of her infirmi­ty. In 1527 she entered a Benedictine monastery as Dame Elizabeth Barton.

Given the fact that Elizabeth was popular and influenced a great many people, it is no wonder that Tyndale taught that her works, (refer­ring to her fits, her clairvoyance and her prophecies), were "...if not per­formed by human trickery, done of the devil, to prove us (Protestants), whether we will cleave fast to God's word; and to deceive them (Catholics), that have no love to the truth of God's word, nor lust to walk in His laws."

Henry VIII, meanwhile, was chafing under the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church who would not permit him to divorce Catherine of Aragon. He wanted reformation within the English church, but not the kind that Tyndale or Luther advocated. He wanted to estab­lish himself as the supreme head of the church with no one to answer to for his infidelities. If none of the Reformers champi­oned Henry's hunger for power, neither did Elizabeth Barton. Staunch supporter of the Pope, she let it be known that she had an oracle for the king. The Lord chancellor, Wolsey, was made aware of Elizabeth's words and he arranged for her to see Henry. Catholic Wolsey, who was having trouble securing the much desired divorce, wel­comed Elizabeth as someone who might influence the king ­someone who might prick his conscience regarding the divorce. The girl knelt in front of Henry and said that an angel had told her to say:

"Go unto the King, that infidel Prince of England, and say that I command him to amend his life; and that he leave three things which he loveth and pur­poseth upon; that is,

• that he take off the Pope's right and patrimony from him;
• that he destroy all these new folks of opinion, and the words of their new learning;
• that, if he married and took Anne to wife, the vengeance of God would plague him."

All her heretical views aside, it took courage for Elizabeth to have said this to her monarch ­one who had merely to snap his finger and her life would be forfeit. And it is to be marveled that Henry did not take offense at her direct words. As it was, he dismissed her and sent her back to the monastery. And Wolsey, still unable to obtain the divorce for Henry, was charged with high treason. Eluding the axman, however, he died before he could be execut­ed. Elizabeth oracled that she saw the disputations of the dev­ils for Wolsey's soul; and she said that she was three times lifted up and could not see him; and she also said that by her penance Wolsey was finally brought to heaven.

Henry was becoming more and more impatient with the Roman Catholic clergy and in 1531 arraigned the entire Catholic clergy  of England for complicity in Wolsey's guilt, in that Wolsey had been an unlawful legate and that they had unlawfully obeyed him. They pleaded guilty and begged the king to pardon them for the price of a hundred thou­sand pounds. Henry granted the pardon with the stipulation that they henceforth address him as "Protector and only Supreme Head of the English Church." Although the clergy refused Henry this title they did eventu­ally compromise on "Supreme Head so far as the law of Christ allows."

All in all, Elizabeth Barton appeared before Henry VIII three times. 1532 was the last time. Henry's marriage to Anne seemed possible at this time and he was in a merry mood. Elizabeth did not kneel before him this time but stood and repeated once again that if he persisted in the divorce and married again, then within one month after such marriage he should no longer be king of England and in the reputation of God should not be king one day nor one hour and that he should die a villain's death.

Henry was not impressed with Elizabeth's persistence in paint­ing him as one to be punished by God with death. Neither did he like the fact that a number of Roman Catholics held up her oracles as true concerning him­self. Elizabeth continued to speak ill of Henry. She warned the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Cardinal-Chancellor, and anyone else who would listen, that the king's ill treatment of his wife and his union with Anne Boleyn were both sinful and repugnant to the Christian conscience.

A new face on the scene, Cranmer, a man with Protestant views, was given canonically approved assent by the pope to become Archbishop and Archbishop Cranmer did become. But the pope soon had cause to regret his assent. When Cranmer was installed as Archbishop, he swore an oath saying that allegiance to King Henry VIII came first and that his oath sworn publicly to the pope was mere form. In April 1533 Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn was declared legal. In the fall of 1533, Elizabeth Barton and a number of her adherents were arrested. The charges were treason and heresy. Upon being interrogated, one Morrison writes of Elizabeth:

"Ordered several times to fall down, distort her face and dis­tend her jaws in the presence of the Duke of Norfolk and the other senior councillors, she fell down, distorted and distended as often as they pleased."

Taken out with those who were closest to her, she was made to stand in the cold November air on a platform erected in front of St. Paul's church in London. There in the presence of thousands who had come out to see her and those accused of treason with her, she signed a statement which read: "I, Dame Elizabeth Barton, do confess that I, most miserable and wretched person, have been the original of all this mischief and by my falsehood have griev­ously deceived all these persons here and many more, whereby I have most grievously offended Almighty God and my most noble sovereign, the King's Grace.

Wherefore I humbly, and with heart most sorrowful, desire you to pray to Almighty God for my miserable sins and, ye that may do me good, to make supplica­tion to my most noble Sovereign for me for his gracious mercy and pardon."

I March 1534, Elizabeth Barton and five of her closest adherents, all priests, were condemned to die. The Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Leonard Skeffington, came to their cells and read:

"From the Tower you shall be drawn through the City to the place of execution at Tyburn, where your body shall be hanged by the neck; half-alive, you shall be cut down and thrown to the ground; your bowels to be taken out of your body before you, being alive; your head to be smitten off, and your body to be divided into four quarters; and after, your head and quarters to be set up, where the King shall appoint; and may God have mercy on your soul."

And so it happened. In April of 1534, the Maid of Kent, being the first in her group to die, spoke these words at Tyburn before a large audience of onlookers:

"Hither am I come to die, and I have not been the only cause of mine own death, which most justly I have deserved, but also I am the cause of the death of all these persons which at this time here suffer.

"And yet, to say the truth, 1 am not so much to be blamed, con­sidering it was well-known to these learned men that 1 was a poor wench without learning; and therefore they might have easily perceived that the things that were done by me could not proceed by no such sort but their capacities and learning could right well judge from whence they proceeded, and that they were altogether feigned.

"But, because the things which I feigned were profitable unto them, therefore they much praised me and bare me in hand that it was the Holy Ghost and not 1 that did them.

"And then I, being puffed up with their praises, fell into a certain pride and foolish fanta­sy with myself and thought might feign what 1 would. "Which thing has brought me to this case: and for the which now I cry God and the King's Highness most heartily mercy, and desire all you good people to pray to God to have mercy on me and on all them that here suffer with me."

After she had spoken these words, Elizabeth Barton was hanged by the neck, and being a woman, was left hanging until she was dead. And all the prayers of the living did not avail her once she was dead.

Henry VIII secured, through political ways and means, a divorce and a national church with himself as its head. He-relished the power to charge with high treason anyone whom he was pleased to charge with high treason, stubbornly retain­ing much of Rome's theology and form of worship. He died in 1547, unable to manipulate death as he had manipulated life.

In 1536, two short years after the death of Elizabeth Barton, William Tyndale was martyred. First strangled and then burned, his soul ascended straightway into heaven.

Let us, who live in this year of our Lord 1999, learn from the pages of history and be shocked in heart and mind by men and women such as Henry VIII and Elizabeth Barton who deformed the Gospel and used it for their own gain. Let us also thank God for such men as Tyndale, pray­ing constantly that more godly preachers might rise up and stand firm for the Gospel truth ­men who are unafraid of criti­cism, scorn and death.

Bibliography:⤒🔗

1.The Holy Maid of Kent by Alan Neame, Hodder and Stoughton, '71.

2.Who's Who in Church History by Elgin Moyer, Keats Pub. 1962. PPub.Incorporated, 1962