Reconstructing the Word: the Political Prophecies of Elizabeth Barton (1506-1534)

Abstract

On 20 April 1534, a twenty-eight year-old Benedictine nun from the convent of St Sepulchre's in Canterbury was hanged at Tyburn alongside her confessor and a number of their associates. The nun was Elizabeth Barton, a former servant from the parish of Aldington in Kent. Barton and her companions were attainted of treason by a Parliamentary Act which asserts that they maliciously opposed Henry VIII's divorce from Katherine of Aragon and “‘traterously attempted many notable actes intendyng therbye the disturbaunce of the pease and tranquyllytie of this Realme.”