inquire of her the will of God, and to ask the benefit of her intercessory prayers, for which also they did not fail to pay at a rate commensurate with their credulity.[1]
This position the Nun of Kent, as she was now called, had achieved for herself, when the divorce question was first agitated. The monks at the Canterbury priory, of course, eagerly espoused the side of the Queen, and the Nun's services were at once in active requisition. Absurd as the stories of her revelations may seem to us, she had already given evidence that she was no vulgar impostor, and in the dangerous career on which she now entered, she conducted herself with the utmost skill and audacity. Far from imitating the hesitation of the Pope and the bishops, she issued boldly, 'in the name and by the authority of God,' a solemn prohibition against the King; threatening that, if he divorced his wife, he should not 'reign a month, but should die a villain's death.'[2] Burdened with this message, she forced herself into the
- ↑ Confessions of Elizabeth Barton: Rolls House MS. Sir Thomas More gave her a double ducat to pray for him and his. Burnet's Collectanea, p. 352. Moryson, in his Apomaxis, declares that she had a regular understanding with the confessors at the Priory. When penitents came to confess, they were detained while a priest conveyed what they had acknowledged to the Nun; and when afterwards they were admitted to her presence, she amazed them with repeating their own confessions.
- ↑ The said Elizabeth subtilly and craftily conceding the opinion and mind of the said Edward Bocking, willing to please him, revealed and showed unto the said Edward that God was highly displeased with our said sovereign lord the King for this matter; and in case he desisted not from his proceeding in the said divorce and separation, but pursued the same and married again, that then within one month after such marriage, he should no longer be King of this realm; and in the reputation of Almighty God he
