Richard Maister, the Rector of Aldington, who first patronised her, seems to have continued his interest in her after she became an inmate of the convent, but Becking, a canon of Christchurch, Canterbury, who became her confessor, was her most enthusiastic abettor. Deering, a monk, collected a number of her declarations, visions, and prophecies. She had began these visions so early as 1526, but they had become every year more blown abroad: and it was observed that they had all a tendency to exalt the power of the Pope and the clergy, and to denounce the vengeance of Heaven on all who disobeyed or attempted to injure them.
Henry had had his attention drawn to this young woman and her visions and utterances in her early career; and he had shown Sir Thomas More her sayings, who replied that he saw nothing in them but what "a right simple woman might, in his mind, speak of her own wit well enough." But as the cause of Catherine more and more agitated the public mind, and the invasion of the monastic property embittered the religious orders, the vaticinations of the maid had risen also in intensity, and struck at higher personages. She asserted that God had shown her a root with three branches, and had declared that it never would be merry in England till both root and branches were destroyed. This was interpreted to mean Wolsey as the root, and the king, Norfolk, and Suffolk, as the three branches. Next she declared that she had seen the Almighty deliver to Wolsey three swords, signifying the threefold authority which he exercised as legate, chancellor, and minister, "in the great matter of the king's marriage;" and, besides, she had at the same time declared that, unless the cardinal made good use of these swords, "it would be laid sorely to his charge." In another vision she went farther, and prophesied that, if he repudiated Catherine, he would die within seven months, and be succeeded by his daughter Mary. Henry had already disproved her soothsaying by far outliving the time prescribed; but when, in 1533, the opponents of his measures had become greatly irritated, he considered that the words of the maid, which were sedulously taken down and circulated through the press, were a powerful means of stirring up the popular feeling against him, and he therefore ordered the arrest of herself and the chief of her accomplices.
In November they were brought into the Star Chamber, and carefully examined by Cranmer, the archbishop, Cromwell, and Hugh Latimer, who soon after was made Bishop of Worcester. This tribunal appears to have intimidated both the maid and her abettors into a confession of the imposture, and they were condemned to stand during the sermon on Sunday at St. Paul's Cross, and there confess the imposture. After that they were remanded to prison, and it was thought that, having disarmed these people by this exposure, he would be satisfied with the punishment they had received. But Henry was now become every day more and more addicted to blood, and ready to shed it for any infringement of those almost Divine rights which the supremacy of the Church seemed to have conferred on him in his own conceit. On the 21st of February, 1534, therefore, a bill of attainder was brought into the House of Lords against the maid, and against Maister, Becking, Deering, Gold, Rich, and Risley, as her abettors, on the plea that their conspiracy tended to bring into peril the king's life and crown. The bill, notwithstanding that it was regarded with horror by the public as a strange and cruel stretch of authority, was passed by the slavish Parliament; and on the 21st of April, 1534, the seven accused were drawn to Tyburn and hanged. At the gallows the poor maiden, Elizabeth Barton, made this confession:—"Hither am I come to die, and I have not only been the cause of mine own death, but am also the cause of the death of all those persons which at this time here suffer. And yet, to say the truth, I am not so much to be blamed, considering that it was well known unto those learned men that I was a poor wench without learning; but because the things which fell from me were profitable unto them, therefore they much praised me, and bare me in hand that it was the Holy Ghost which said them, and not I: and then I, being puffed up with their praises, fell into certain pride and foolish fantasy, which hath brought me to this."
The case of the poor girl is clear enough by the light of modern science. She was a mesmeric subject, whose mind was stimulated and played upon by those about her for their own purposes. With her, besides the persons who suffered immediately, there were also accused of corresponding with her, Edward Thwaites, gentleman, Thomas Lawrence, registrar to the Archdeacon of Canterbury, Fisher, the venerable Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More. Fisher was now old, and had passed a life of great honour for his learning, integrity, and accomplishments. He was an admired friend of the celebrated Erasmus. He was the last survivor of the counsellors of Henry VII., and the prelate to whose care the Countess of Richmond, the mother of Henry VII., had committed the education of her grandson, now Henry VIII. Henry had felt or professed great affection for his old tutor, and had boasted that no prince in Europe had a prelate equal in learning and virtue to the Bishop of Rochester. Fortunate would it have been for Henry had he been wise enough to follow the counsels of Fisher; and most unfortunate for the bishop that he lived under a prince who would either bend to his sensual will every mind about him, however great and dignified, or would destroy their possessors from his path. Nothing but the blood of those who thwarted him could satisfy Henry. He seized on this pretence to further his vengeance, and he soon discovered more plausible cause to consummate it.
Fisher, who was in his seventy-sixth year, confessed that he had seen and conversed with Elizabeth Barton; that he had heard her utter her prophecies concerning the king; and that he had not mentioned them to the sovereign, because her declarations did not refer to any violence against the king, but merely to a visitation of Providence; and because, also, he knew that the king had received the communication of the prophecies from the maid herself, who had had for that purpose a private audience with the king. He was, therefore, he said, guiltless of any conspiracy: and knew not, as he would answer it before the throne of Christ, of any malice or evil that was intended by her, or by any other earthly creature, unto the king's highness.
The name of Sir Thomas More was erased from this
