have been very great not only to the spectators but still more to the subject of the phenomenon herself. To sustain ourselves continuously under the influence of reason, even when our faculties are preserved in their natural balance, is a task too hard for most of us. We cannot easily make too great allowance for the moral derangement likely to follow, when a weak girl suddenly found herself possessed of powers which she was unable to understand. Bearing this in mind, for it is only just that we should do so, we continue the story.
This Elizabeth Barton, then, 'in the trances, of which she had divers and many,[1] consequent upon her illness, told wondrously things done and said in other places whereat she was neither herself present, nor yet had heard no report thereof.' To simple-minded people who believed in Romanism and the legends of the saints, the natural explanation of such a marvel was, that she must be possessed either by the Holy Ghost or by the devil. The Archbishop's bailiff, not feeling himself able to decide in a case of so much gravity, called in the advice of the parish priest, one Richard Masters; and together they observed carefully all that fell from her. The girl had been well disposed, as the priest probably knew. She had been brought up religiously; and her mind running upon what was most familiar to it, 'she spake words of marvellous holyness in rebuke of sin and vice;'[2] or, as another account says, 'she spake very godly certain things concerning the seven deadly sins
- ↑ Letter of Archbishop Cranmer.—Ellis, second series, vol. ii. p. 314.
- ↑ Statutes of the Realm. 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
