Reconstructing the Word: the Political Prophecies of Elizabeth Barton (1506-1534)
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 VII's divorce from Katherine of Aragon and "'traterously attempted many notable actes intendyng therbye the disturbaunce of the pease and tranquyllytie of this Realme."' The Act goes on to specify that those attainted claimed that Elizabeth Barton had received a revelation from God, that in case hys Highnes proceded to thaccomplishment of the seid devorce and maried another, that then hys Majestie shulde not be kynge of this Realme by the space of one moneth after, And in the reputacion of God shuld not be kynge one day nor one houre.2 Deliberately couching her prophecy in ambiguous terms, Barton did not state exactly how Henry VM would lose his kingdom, but this did not make her words any less compromising. The King's reign was understood to be divinely ordained; to rebel was a sin against God, and to envisage the King's death could be a crime of treason. Whether or not Barton was at the center of a conspiracy against Henry, as the Act of Attainder argued, her claim that God had revealed to her that He no longer recognized Henry's monarchy could have both sanctioned and inspired insurrection in a country already