During the Tudor Period, there were thousands of executions which were carried out across
England.
Henry VIII executed some of his closest friends such as Thomas Cromwell and Sir Thomas More,
and these both lost their heads on Tower Hill.
To disagree or go against the King or Queen was very dangerous, and one of the most serious
things a woman could be accused of was witchcraft.
Throughout the centuries, hundreds of women were executed being considered to have been
witches, but there was one woman who dared to tell Henry VIII not to marry his second
wife Anne Boleyn.
Elizabeth Barton or the Nun of Kent was considered a brave lady, but to tell the King how to
live his life was not acceptable, neither was prophecisizing or predicting the death
of the King.
She was ultimately found guilty of treason and was sentenced to a brutal death.
Join us today as we look at the execution of the Nun of Kent, Elizabeth Barton; remember
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Elizabeth Barton’s early life isn’t well documented, but she was born around 1506.
She wasn’t well off or rich, and it’s most probable that she didn’t receive a
good standard of education and we must assume that she could not read or write.
But she worked as a servant in the household of a man named Thomas Cobb who worked for
Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham as his farm manager in a local village 20 miles
away from Canterbury.
However in 1535 Elizabeth became ill and it was said that, ‘she ‘was touched with
a great infirmity in her body, which did ascend at diverse times up into her throat and swelled
greatly, during which 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.’
She was prone to illness but when she became sick, she began to predict events and indulge
in bizarre behaviour.
During one, she predicted the death of a sick child, and she meddled with predictions and
a number believed that she was touched by God to warn people on earth.
In reality she was suffering from seizures and possibly epilepsy which caused her body
and face to spasm and contort, and she would briefly suffer from paralysis.
But she predicted many things about religion, hammering home her Catholic beliefs.
But she became a huge tourist attraction in a sense, and people would come from all over
to see Elizabeth Barton’s visions and ideas, and even Thomas Cranmer came to visit and
he claimed he’d seen and witnessed a miracle.
He saw Elizabeth in a trance for 3 hours, and then in this she spoke of heaven and also
warned of hell.
But Cranmer must have thought she was witnessing the afterlife in these episodes, and she became
known as the Nun of Kent.
But Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham and John Fisher were also impressed, and they
arranged for her to try and meet Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s most senior advisor.
But during this meeting, Elizabeth Barton told Cardinal Wolsey that she saw him with
three swords, representing the power he had from the Pope, and the power he had as Lord
Chancellor, and the final showed the power he had to get Henry VIII his divorce from
his first wife.
But Wolsey then sorted out a meeting for Elizabeth to meet with Henry VIII, and during this meeting
she went fully on the offensive.
She told Henry VIII to burn all English translations of the Bible and to back the Pope and the
Catholic Church.
She said however if he married his Second wife Anne Boleyn, then with a month of the
marriage taking place the King would be dead.
She followed this up saying that England would then be hit by a devastating plague that would
kill thousands.
Henry was shocked, and he told his friends to keep a close eye on her.
Many others saw her as a symbol of the devil, and warned that her visions were the work
of an evil being.
Ultimately by predicting the death of the King if he married his second wife, Elizabeth
Barton had committed treason as she could have been seen as wishing this to happen.
She went on tour up and down the country addressing large groups of people.
People asked her to cure them of illnesses and diseases and to speak to God for them.
She ultimately was a Catholic purist and warned against the Protestant church.
But he met the King again in October 1532 and during this she said how God hated what
the King was doing, and she yet again told Henry VIII that he was going to die if he
went ahead with the wedding and that he would also be damned to hell.
However Anne Boleyn was already pregnant, and the King decided he had no choice but
to marry her and he quickly annulled his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
But Elizabeth Barton had attracted a large amount of criticism from other members of
the Church who told her to hold back a little bit on her criticism of the King.
Many believed that she could have been executed for her predictions, but she didn’t hold
fire and instead wrote a book.
Cromwell discovered this and he ordered all copies of them to be burned, but then Thomas
Cranmer brought her in for questioning.
She was later released, but was then again questioned by Thomas Cromwell, and she and
her book publisher were arrested.
In November 1533 Elizabeth Barton found herself locked up inside the Tower of London and being
interrogated daily by Cromwell and Cranmer.
Cromwell stated that to the King that Elizabeth had never had visions and had made up these
predictions for fun from her imagination.
She may have been tortured and placed on the rack to draw a confession.
But on the 23rd November 1553 she was publicly humiliated and was forced to confess what
she had said was a lie.
She did this in many towns, and Henry VIII saw her as a threat.
But then he passed a law in which charged Elizabeth Barton and her co-conspirators with
treason for predicting the King’s death, and the bill was passed and Elizabeth Barton
was sentenced to be executed.
She was taken from the Tower of London to Tyburn where triangular gallows stood that
took the lives of thousands.
She spoke to the scaffold and said, ‘‘I have not only been the cause of my own death,
which most justly I have deserve, but also I am the cause of deaths of all these persons
which at this time here suffer.
To say the truth, I am not so much blamed considering it was well known unto these learned
men that I was a poor wench without learning, and therefore they might have easily perceived
that the things were done by me could not proceed in such short, but their capacities
and learning could right well judge from whence they proceeded…
But because the things which I feigned was profitable until them, therefore they much
praised me, and that it was the Holy Ghost that I did them.
And then I being puffed up with their praises, feel a certain pride and foolish fantasy with
myself.’
She admitted she was a fraud.
But her execution was barbaric.
She was hanged and then beheaded, and was the only woman to have ever had her head placed
on London Bridge as a traitor.
But Elizabeth Barton was a woman who ultimately predicted the death of Tudor England’s notorious
King, and for this it was deemed right for her to die by Henry VIII.
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