commission, an authority above all principalities and powers. If it were likely that she could have heard the story of the Maid of Orleans, it might be supposed that her imagination tempted her to play again a similar career on an English stage, and that she fancied herself the destined saviour of the Church of Christ, as the Maid had been the saviour of France.
It would indeed be a libel on the fair fame of Joan of Arc, if she were to be compared to a confessed impostor; but Joan of Arc might have been the reality which the Nun attempted to counterfeit; and the history of the true heroine might have suggested easily to the imitator the outline of her part. A revolution had been effected in Europe by a somnambulist peasant girl; another peasant girl, a somnambulist also, might have seen in the achievement which had been already accomplished, an earnest of what might be done by herself. While we call the Nun, too, an impostor, we are bound to believe that she first imposed upon herself, and that her wildest adventures into falsehood were compatible with a belief that she was really and truly inspired. Nothing short of such a conviction would have enabled her to play a part among kings and queens, and so many of the ablest statesmen of that most able age. Nothing else could have tempted her, on the failure of
bishop of Canterbury, being very well-minded to further and set at an end the marriage which the King's Grace now enjoyeth, according to their spiritual duty, were prevented by the false revelations of the said Nun. And that the said Bishop of Canterbury was so minded may be proved by divers which knew then his towardness.—Narrative of the Proceedings of Elizabeth Barton: Rolls House MS.
