VII CHAP interest as well as her sympathies were all bound up with her mother's side. Of course she became what a young girl must have become under such circumstances, a loving partizan. What mother, and what daughter, does not feel that this is what the daughter of so good and injured a mother ought to have been? Could a father or a brother wish that a girl of seventeen should have been otherwise? Declared to be ille The Princess had been separated from her mother, gitimate and told that for the future she would be considered as a natural daughter of the King, and must only use the name and style of " the Lady Mary," instead of that which she had hitherto used. To this she had boldly replied that she would not consent unless the King himself wrote to her to that effect; and she maintained her resolution until the year 1536, in spite of threats and humiliations. Among the latter may be mentioned that of abolishing her separate establishment, and obliging her to find a home in that of her infant sister Elizabeth, the offspring of her mother's supplanter. 4 Her trou- It was not surprising that the harshness and inbles gained justice shown towards one who had so long been the sympa thizers acknowledged heir to the Crown should raise up many sympathizers and partizans. It helped to consolidate a strong feeling of reaction that had been aroused by the miserable divorce business which had just been concluded, and the onslaught upon the monasteries which was just beginning. That feeling of reaction was exhibited in various ways, and was Strype's Ecc. Mem. i. 224. 455, 457. Her signature appears separately to the illegitimacy article as if extorted by much per suasion. VII henceforth irrepressible, notwithstanding the unspar CHAF ing vengeance with which it was visited by Cromwell and the King. Its first manifestation was, however, unfortunate for the credit of all concerned The Nun in it, being the superstitious or dishonest affair asso- comes into ciated with the name of Elizabeth Barton, the nun of Kent. 5 He of Kent notice This young woman had been attracting attention for some years. She was subject to epileptic fits, and while under their influence gave utterance to some of those strange and solemn sounds which are often heard from persons so afflicted, and which might easily be mistaken for supernatural utterances by ignorant and superstitious bystanders. The clergyman of the parish, Richard Masters, had been put in to farm the souls of it cheaply for Erasmus, and was too inferior a man to deal properly with such an outbreak of superstition as ensued. eventually consulted Dr. Bocking, one of the canons of the Cathedral, and it appears as if the two entered into a conspiracy to make political and pecuniary capital out of the poor epileptic girl. It was Made a made to appear, or did appear, that she was cured of tool of by her disease while kneeling before an image of the men Blessed Virgin: and those who had made pilgrimages to see the supposed prophetess, now made them to see the wonderful image, the girl herself being received as a nun into the convent of St. Sepulchre at Canterbury. This was about the year 1528, shortly after which Bocking endeavoured (through Archbishop Warham), to bring her under 5 Aldington in Kent, to which Erasmus had been presented by Archbishop Warham, but the spiritual charge of which he declined, accepting only a pecuniary charge intriguing VII CHAP the notice of Wolsey. Not succeeding in attracting the attention of the Cardinal, Warham (himself a believer in the nun) placed some of her "prophecies" in the hands of the King, who referred them to Sir Thomas More but More had no higher opinion of them than had Wolsey. From this time the nun's prophecies began to take a more serious turn, and the results were ultimately "After she had been at of a very tragic kind. Canterbury awhile, and had heard this said Dr. Bocking rail like a frantic person against the King's Grace's purposed marriage, against his Acts of Parliament, and against the maintenance of heresies within his realm," she began to have visions and revelations respecting the King, the Cardinal (alive and dead), the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the public affairs with which they were associated. These drew to her persons who ought to have known better : "Divers and many, as well great men of the realm as mean men, and many learned men, but specially divers and many religious men, had great confidence in her, and often resorted unto her and communed with her, to the intent they might by her know the will of God; and chiefly concerning the King's marriage, the great heresies and schisms within the realm, and the taking away the liberties of the Church; for in these three points standeth the great number of her visions, which were so many that her ghostly father could scantly write them in three or four quires of paper." זיי About midsummer in the year 1533, Archbishop Cranmer continues to write, he "sent for this holy maid to examine her; and from me she was had to Master Cromwell to be further examined there. And now" [Christmas of the same year] "she hath Ellis' Orig. Letters, III. ii. 137. 7 Jenkyns' Cranmer, i. 81 and note x. VII fession of confessed all, and uttered the very truth, which is CHAP this: that she never had vision in all her life, but all that ever she said was feigned of her own imagination, only to satisfy the minds of them the which Her conresorted unto her, and to obtain worldly praise." 8 imposture After this disclosure the nun and five monksBocking, Rich, Rysby, Dering, and Goold-were sent to the Tower, where some or all of them were tortured; their extorted confessions unravelling a real or imaginary conspiracy for the death of the King, and for placing the Princess Mary on the throne. The Countess of Salisbury, and others of the nobility near to the royal blood, were implicated, and so also were Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More. Fisher at A. D. 1534 Shortly after the meeting of Parliament on January More and 15, 1533-4, a bill of attainder was introduced against inte the nun, the five monks, More, Fisher, Abel (the with her Queen's confessor), and others. It was passed on March 21st, and on April 21st, the nun, Masters, Bocking, and the other four monks, were all executed at Tyburn. of the plot Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher were the only other persons towards whom Cromwell and the King seem to have wished to show any great severity, and it is not unlikely, therefore, that the supposed Doubt as plot against the King's life was a political fiction, for to reality neither King nor minister ever showed mercy to those whom they considered guilty of treason. Fisher and More were, in fact, marked for destruction, and their condemnation was only a question of time. They were leading men, the one in the world of thought, and the other in that of religion, and both had shown 8 Jenkyns' Cranmer, i. 82. VII More escapes for a time CHAP enough independence to render them dangerous in the eyes of Henry and Cromwell. They escaped for a time, because nothing could be really proved against them. Sir Thomas More wrote to the King claiming the fulfilment of a promise made him on his resignation of the chancellorship, that the King would stand his friend in any trouble: and he was pardoned. Bishop Fisher stoutly denied the charges of treason that were made against him, but was condemned to forfeit all his goods, and to be imprisoned. Then Fisher knew that his time was |
