Everything about Elizabeth Barton totally explained
Sr. Elizabeth Barton (known as
The Nun of Kent,
The Holy Maid of London,
The Holy Maid of Kent and later
The Mad Maid of Kent;
1506? –
April 20 1534) was executed as a result of her prophecies regarding the marriage of King
Henry VIII of England to
Anne Boleyn against the wishes of the
Pope.
Little is known of Barton's early life although she appears to have come from a poor background, as she was working as a servant when her visions first began in 1525. During that year, she suffered from a severe unknown illness, and she claimed to have received revelations from God. Barton's revelations either predicted future events (such as the death of a child living in her household) or, more frequently, took the form of pleas for people to follow the teachings of the
Roman Catholic Church. In particular she urged people to pray to The
Virgin Mary and undertake
pilgrimages.
Shortly after she'd begun receiving visions, she entered a convent and became a nun. She rapidly became popular among both the masses and the elite leadership that controlled England. Barton held a private meeting in 1528 with
Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, the most powerful man in England after the King, and shortly thereafter met with the King himself on two occasions. Barton was accepted by the government because her prophecies didn't then challenge the existing order but rather supported it.
Unfortunately for Barton, the existing order changed when Henry VIII, in order to obtain an
annulment from
Catherine of Aragon, decided to break with Rome, and create the
Church of England. Barton was strongly opposed to the
Henrician Reformation, and around 1532 she began prophesying that if the King would remarry he'd die shortly thereafter. (He would in fact live for 15 years.) Remarkably, Barton went unpunished for nearly a year, in large part because she appears to have been more popular than the King in many quarters. In fact, Barton was tried for treason only after supporters of the King had spread rumors that Barton was engaged in sexual relationships with her priests. Others asserted that Barton suffered from
mental illness. With her reputation damaged, in 1533 the crown arrested her and forced Barton to make either a real confession or a fabricated one. According to the confession presented Barton admitted that she'd fabricated her revelations. In 1534 she was executed for
treason and hanged at the
Tyburn gallows in Westminster.
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