Barton, ELIZABETH, commonly called the nun or maid of Kent, was born in 1506. About the year 1525, when a domestic servant at Aldington in Kent, she had an illness, in the course of recovery from which she fell into a strange state of nervous derangement and religious mania, in which she uttered hysterical ravings. When her illness left her, she still continued her trances and prophetic utterances, which drew so much attention that Archbishop Warham directed that two monks should be sent to examine her. One of these, Edward Bocking, at once saw in her abnormal faculties a rare opportunity for reviving popular respect for the Catholic church. He instructed her carefully in the controversial points between his church and the Protestants, as well as in the legends of the saints, and persuaded her to give herself out as directly inspired by the Virgin. Soon afterwards she became an inmate of the priory of St Sepulchre at Canterbury, but Bocking continued to be her close attendant and the inspirer of her prophecies and revelations. As soon as the divorce of Henry VIII. began to be discussed, the nun denounced it 'in the name and by the authority of God,' and threatened the king with death if he persisted in his purpose. Archbishop Warham was convinced by her earnestness, the astute Wolsey gave her an audience, Sir Thomas More listened to her more than once with interest, and Bishop Fisher wept with joy over her revelations. The king's marriage to Anne Boleyn (1533) and his subsequent immunity from the awful consequences so confidently foretold destroyed her credit; and, meantime, her friend Warham had died, and Cranmer reigned in his room. She was soon 'put to the question,' and repeated examinations drew a full confession from her in September of the same year that 'she never had visions in all her life, but all that she ever said was feigned of her own imagination only, to satisfy the minds of those which resorted to her, and to obtain worldly praise.'
After the humiliation of a public recantation, she was committed to prison; but soon after the close of the year was put on trial for high treason, condemned and executed at Tyburn with Bocking and four other accomplices on the 20th of April 1534. In her dying speech the nun described herself as 'a poor wench without learning,' who had been puffed up by praises to her own undoing and that of her companions.