An Event at the College of St Elizabeth

On Wednesday I was the guest of honor at a lunch held for the College of St. Elizabeth, a small, private liberal arts school in Morristown. The alumni met at Shadowbrook, a lovely historic building not too far from the Atlantic Ocean. I was invited by alumni Patricia King, who writes wonderful historical mysteries under the pen name Annamaria Alfieri.

With the roses given by the college, and my friend Patricia King.

I enjoyed the Q&A the most. It's always so interesting to learn what people are curious about. My opinion on Henry VIII's Reformation, how I consulted with a Dominican nun in fact checking my books, and whether I feel "Wolf Hall" is fair--those were the topics of discussion.

The warm and friendly alumni

And I was very pleased and grateful to see the books selling briskly at the table staffed by BookTowne, an independant shop in Manasquan. The Crown sold out! :)

My books on sale!

Five Myths About the Man Who Died With Cromwell

by Nancy Bilyeau

The fall of Henry VIII's minister Thomas Cromwell was swift, deeply cynical and brutal to the point of savagery. And yet the worst part of it may have been that Cromwell saw it coming--and could not save himself.

Months before his arrest, Cromwell gathered his many servants and told them "what a slippery state he stood and required them to look diligently and circumspectly into their order and actions, lest, through their default, any occasion might arise against them."

Thomas Cromwell

Just as the nobility hated Cromwell's humbly born patron, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, they loathed and envied the self-made man whom the king relied on through the 1530s, the man who had risen from blacksmith's son and mercenary soldier to Lord Privy Seal and Earl of Essex. Joining nobles such as Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, in their hatred of Cromwell were the religious conservatives, led by Bishop Stephen Gardiner. Wolsey fell because he could not extricate Henry VIII from his marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. And once it became clear that the King wanted out of his marriage to fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, and Cromwell was not hastening to do so, the pack of enemies smelled blood.

Cromwell was arrested on June 10, 1540, in a way meant to cause as much humiliation as possible. The Duke of Norfolk ripped the Order of St. George from around Cromwell's neck while the Earl of Southampton tore the Order of the Garter insignia from his gown. "Traitors must not wear the garter," shouted Norfolk. Cromwell was then hustled directly to the Tower of London; within two hours, the treasurer of the royal household had emptied Cromwell's house of valuables while others ransacked his papers.

There was no trial. Cromwell was condemned of treason and "abominable heresies" and executed on July 28, 1540.

An execution on Tower Hill in the 1550s

But Cromwell did not die alone.

Following Thomas Cromwell to the scaffold erected on Tower Hill (not Tyburn, as some historians have written) was Sir Walter Hungerford. The decision to behead two men that day was unusual, though not unprecedented. Two noblemen that Cromwell had targeted for destruction--Henry Pole, Lord Montague, and Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter--died together in late 1538. But those two men, condemned without trial for treason, were lifelong friends, distantly related, and requested a joint execution.

Why was Sir Walter Hungerford chosen for this ghastly honour? Cromwell was the author of the Reformation, a brilliant and ruthless statesman. His enemies sent Hungerford on the same path, from Tower of London cell to scaffold. It's a mystery that still swirls around that hot, pitiless day. In this post, I examine the myths, the theories and evidence.

True or False: Hungerford Was a Nobody

One theory is that Sir Walter Hungerford was an obscure and debauched criminal, so despicable that it would taint Cromwell to share a scaffold with such a creature.

Hungerford was a man of dark secrets, it would seem. But he was not a nobody.

Although some followers of Tudor history may not have heard of Hungerford, his family was a distinguished one with generations of service to the royal family. Sir Thomas Hungerford was steward to John of Gaunt in the 14th century and built the grand Farleigh Hungerford Castle in Somerset.

A reconstruction of Farleigh Hungerford Castle in its heyday

His son, Sir Walter, fought at Agincourt, served as an admiral and became Speaker of the House of Commons. The Hungerfords sided with the Lancastrians in the Wars of the Roses and accumulated much wealth, establishing a London house on the Thames near Westminster Abbey. Nonetheless, the family had an unpleasant reputation: "..their record for dishonesty, vice and violence seems to have been exceptional even in the unsqueamish age in which they flourished," reports one chronicler.

The Sir Walter Hungerford of our tale was born in 1503 and served as a squire of the body to Henry VIII. In May 1536, he was a member of the jury that heard the case of the accused lovers of Anne Boleyn--Mark Smeaton, Henry Norris, Francis Weston, and William Brereton. The King and Cromwell made it clear what verdict they expected to hear, and Sir Walter Hungerford delivered. Guilty, on all counts.

Anne Boleyn

On June 8, 1536 he was summoned to Parliament as Lord Hungerford of Heytesbury. By this time Hungerford owned estates all over Wiltshire, especially in Heytesbury parish. He was a man on the rise.

True or False: Hungerford an Important Cromwell Ally

Sir Walter married three times (more on his unhappy marriages later). In 1532, his father-in-law, Sir John Hussey, wrote to Cromwell, saying that Sir Walter "much desired" an introduction. To make the best possible impression, Hungerford sent Cromwell "a patent of five marks a year." In other words, he bribed him. Through serving on the jury condemning Anne Boleyn's lovers and paying his patent of marks, Hungerford must have pursued his goal in just the right way, for soon after, Hungerford became Sheriff of Wiltshire, an important position. By all accounts, he then dedicated himself to enforcing the law and rounding up traitors to the King.

So yes, Hungerford was known to be a Cromwell client and ally, but there were many other men who fulfilled more important roles in the kingdom. Hungerford's influence did not extend beyond Wiltshire. He was by no means a principal supporter, nor was he a royal councilor. So why kill him with Cromwell?

True or False: Hungerford was a Dangerous Traitor

One of the most striking things about Sir Walter Hungerford was how marital unhappiness, if not violence, surrounded him. Either his stepmother, Agnes, or one of his wives was found guilty of murder and hanged.  His marriage to Elizabeth, daughter of John, Lord Hussey of Sleaford, suffered when his father-in-law rebelled against Henry VIII in the religious rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. One of the aims of the pilgrimage was the removal of Cromwell. The rebellion failed; Hussey was executed. At around the same time, according to Elizabeth, her husband, Lord Hungerford, imprisoned her in the family castle and tried to do away with her.

After Cromwell's arrest, among all the letters found, was the one by Elizabeth accusing Lord Hungerford:

Here I have been for three or four years past, without comfort of any creature, and under custody of my lord's chaplain, which hath once or twice poisoned me, as he will not deny under examination. He hath promised my lord that he 'would soon rid him of me,' and I am sure he intendeth to keep his promise.

In the same letter, she said she refused to eat or drink anything the chaplain brought her, claiming that food donated by "poor women" was "brought to my window in the night."

Was the letter genuine? It's hard to know--after her husband's death, Elizabeth married the courtier Sir Robert Throckmorton and gave birth to four daughters.

The treason charges against Sir Walter Hungerford are also mixed up with the Pilgrimage of Grace. According to his indictment, in October 1536, Hungerford pretended to arrest a vicar sympathetic to the rebels, William Bird. Instead, he employed him as chaplain for "several months." (This was not the same chaplain as the man who supposedly imprisoned his wife; Hungerford had a large household.)

But even if true, was this enough to condemn a man to death?

True or False: Hungerford was a Witch

The second crime that Hungerford was accused of was witchcraft.

A 17th century witch

Supposedly, on March 22, 1537, at Farleigh Castle, Hungerford called upon two men, Sir Hugh Wood and Dr. Maudlin, to use magic to predict how long Henry VIII would live. The spring of 1537 was a dangerous time. The Pilgrimage of Grace was suppressed, but it had been a frightening struggle for Henry VIII and Cromwell. Their enemies were being rounded up and executed.

At that time, Prince Edward had not yet been born; Henry VIII had no male heir. It wouldn't have been surprising if some people had questions about the future of the kingdom. But using prophecy to forecast the length of the life of the sovereign was high treason. This was the same charge that brought down Edward Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham in 1521, also for supposedly employing minor religious figures to gaze into the King's future in his private castle. The similarity of the charges is striking--and suspicious.

True or False: Hungerford was a Moral Criminal

The third crime Hungerford was accused of was "the abominable and detestable vice and sin of buggery" with several servants. The Buggery Act was an act of Parliament passed in 1533, sponsored by none other than Thomas Cromwell. It was thought that he meant to use it to confiscate the property of monks accused of the crime.

Despite being married several times and fathering four children, was Hungerford gay? It's possible. Hungerford was the only person to be executed for the accused crime in the entire Tudor period. (Let me emphasize that being gay is not a crime at all!)

Another possibility exists. It's believed that in 1536, Anne Boleyn was charged with incest with her brother George as a shock tactic, the crime concocted to make it easier to condemn her on the shakier charges. Hungerford's enemies--whoever they were--might have tried the same thing in 1540.

July 28, 1540

A great many soldiers appeared on Tower Hill the day of the execution, in case of some last-minute defense of Cromwell. The chronicler Edward Hall said he was greatly mourned by the "common people." But there was no outcry on his behalf that day. Sir William Kingston, who listened to Anne Boleyn's terrified rambling while she was imprisoned, was still the constable. Perhaps it was Kingston who led Hungerford and Cromwell out to the hill and formally handed them over to the jurisdiction of the city of London for execution.

Eyewitnesses agree that Hungerford panicked before the crowd. Some modern historians refer to Sir Walter as well known for insanity. But the pragmatic letters he wrote to Cromwell just a couple of years earlier attest to Hungerford's being well able to function in society. It is likely that, during his weeks of interrogation and with the knowledge he would soon die on the block, Hungerford had a nervous breakdown, like Jane Boleyn would in late 1541.

Hungerford "seemed so unquiet that many judged him rather in a frenzy than otherwise," said one observer. Cromwell, who was about to make his final remarks to the crowd, took aside Sir Walter and said to him:

There is no cause for you to fear. If you repent and be heartily sorry for what you have done, there is for you mercy enough for the Lord, who for Christ's sake will forgive you. Therefore be not dismayed, and though the breakfast we are going to be sharp, yet, trusting in the mercy of the Lord, we shall have a joyous dinner.

Cromwell was the first to die, in a bungled beheading infamous for its ghastliness. Hungerford followed. Both bodies were carted to the nearby Church of St. Peter ad Vincula, within the Tower walls. Their graves are a few feet from Anne Boleyn's. As Macaulay wrote, "In truth there is no sadder spot on earth than that little cemetery."

Because he was a traitor, Hungerford's estates and homes were claimed by the crown. Henry VIII gave Farleigh Hungerford Castle to his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Seymour. It was not a small acquisition. Which is perhaps as good a reason as any for the destruction of Sir Walter Hungerford.

The ruins of Farleigh Hungerford Castle today

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Nancy Bilyeau is the author of the award-winning historical trilogy The Crown, The Chalice and The Tapestry, published by the Touchstone imprint of Simon & Schuster. The protagonist is Sister Joanna Stafford, a Dominican novice. The Crown was an Oprah pick; The Tapestry was a finalist for the Daphne du Maurier Award for Best Historical Suspense for 2016. To learn more, go to www.nancybilyeau.com

'The Tapestry' a Finalist for Daphne du Maurier Award

I'm extremely proud to share the news that The Tapestry is a finalist for the 2016 award for Best Historical Romantic Suspense from the Romance Writers of America.

Daphne du Maurier was an influence on my writing from the very beginning, and I look on this as a tremendous honor.

The news on who won the award will be released in July!

Was the Duke of Buckingham Guilty?

By Nancy Bilyeau

Edward Stafford

On May 17, 1521, Edward Stafford, 43, third duke of Buckingham, was beheaded on Tower Hill outside the Tower of London, found guilty of high treason against Henry VIII.

In Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, the king said of Buckingham, “He hath into monstrous habits put the graces that were once his, and is become as black as if besmear’d in hell.”  In the miniseries The Tudors Buckingham actively plots against the king, seeking to replace him, and goes to his execution wailing in terror.

What was the actual evidence against him at trial? Separating fact from fiction, did Buckingham plot against the king? The answer: there was no proof of any plot, no actions taken against Henry VIII. But Edward Stafford was guilty nonetheless — of being too noble, too rich and too arrogant to survive in the increasingly paranoid court of Henry VIII, his cousin once removed.

Buckingham’s entire life was marked with loss and suspicion.

When he was five years old, his father, the second duke, was executed by Richard III. His father allied with Richard to seize Richard's nephew on the road to London, and the duke of Buckingham is considered a key suspect in the murders of the princes in the Tower. For whatever reason, he suddenly turned against the king, and was actively trying to overthrow him when arrested. His heir, young Edward Stafford, was hidden from Richard III in relatives’ homes, not to emerge until  Henry VII defeated the last Yorkist king at Bosworth.

Edward became a royal ward of the Tudor family, knighted at the age of seven. His closest blood tie came through the Woodville family. His mother, Catherine, was the sister of Elizabeth, wife of Edward IV and mother of Elizabeth of York. Edward Stafford was from a strong Lancaster family that recently married into the York dynasty. It should have made him a special favorite.

But as Edward grew into a proud, preening adolescent, Henry VII cooled toward him, fearing that he outshone the heir to the throne, the future Henry VIII. 

The Tudors saw the Staffords as a threat. 

The family's history was turbulent from the start. In 1347, Ralph de Stafford, a supporter of Edward III and a founding member of the Order of the Garter, built Stafford Castle. Ralph was a tough, ambitious and ruthless soldier. After his first wife died, he abducted a wealthy young heiress and married her, ignoring the outrage of her parents. When the girl's family turned to Edward III for justice, he refused to order Stafford to give up his bride. Instead, he gave the parents more titles to shut them up. 

One of the descendants of this union married a descendant of Edward III's youngest son, Thomas of Woodstock. The Staffords now had a royal stake. Humphrey Stafford, the first Duke of Buckingham, was a passionate loyalist to Henry VI and a leading Lancastrian aristocrat and commander of armies. He was known for saying such things as, "The earl of Warwick shall not come to the king's presence, and if he comes, he shall die." He died at the Battle of Northampton in 1460, defending the king's honor.

It was a fiery family legacy for Edward Stafford.

Henry VIII succeeded to the throne in 1509, unchallenged by his older cousin. In fact, the duke was lord high steward for the coronation and carried the crown. But Stafford was noticed. A foreign ambassador wrote admiringly of “my lord of Buckingham, a noble man and would be a royal ruler."

Over the next ten years he was pushed out of the center of power more and more--if he had ever occupied it, which is doubtful. As friends, Henry VIII much preferred lower-born, jovial men of the joust yard like Charles Brandon and William Compton. And the man who ran the entire kingdom was Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. There was no place for Buckingham.

In response, Edward Stafford married a noblewoman of the Percy family, fathered four children (and several illegitimate children), and withdrew to his estates, where he was the unquestioned man in charge. The family seat was Stafford Castle, but he wanted something more modern and spectacular. He began construction of Thornbury Castle. Did its beauty draw the hostility of Henry VIII, himself a fanatical builder?

Thornbury Castle

What more likely changed the cousins’ relationship was Henry VIII's lack of a male heir. 

Catherine of Aragon's last pregnancy was in 1518. They had a daughter, Mary. But the Tudor dynasty was a new one , and Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey weren’t sure that the nobility would accept a female ruler when Henry died. Might they not look to the duke of Buckingham or one of his sons, instead? (Henry VIII's decision to annul his marriage and try to father a son with a new wife was years in the future. Anne Boleyn was still in France.)

On April 8, 1521, the duke was ordered to London from Thornbury. He set out for the court, seemingly unaware of any danger, and was greatly shocked when arrested along the way and taken to the Tower.

 At his trial, he was charged with “imagining and compassing the death of the king,” through seeking out prophecy from a monk named Nicholas Hopkins about the chances of the king having a male heir. Evidence was supposedly obtained from disgruntled former members of the duke’s household.

This was a controversial charge. In 1397 a statute was introduced making it treason to imagine or "encompass the death of the king" and conviction could be based on it. But the law was repealed just a few years later because of the need for some action along with the imagining to make it treason. At Buckingham's trial, certain lords asked the chief justice if a person could be convicted "on the basis of words alone." They were told that it was not a felony without an action taken, but nonetheless,  "if one intends the death of the King, it is treason." The message was clear.

Buckingham denied all charges, including seeking prophecy. His friends said those who testified against the duke were bribed or threatened. But a jury of 17 peers found him guilty, led by the duke of Norfolk, who condemned him — while weeping.

Edward Stafford died with dignity on Tower Hill, and was buried in the Church of the Austin Friars. One chronicler said Buckingham’s death was “universally lamented by all London.”

Parliament passed a bill of attainder, and the duke’s enormous wealth — his castles and holdings and titles — passed to the crown. Henry VIII took Thornbury for himself; he stayed there for more than a week  in 1535 with Anne Boleyn. Buckingham's London residence was given to Henry Courtenay, marchioness of Exeter. 

The illustrious Stafford clan never rose to prominence again. They were the first noble family to be crushed by Henry VIII … but definitely not the last. Those who say that Henry VIII changed from a good man into a tyrant in the 1530s, particularly 1536, should take a long look at the death of Buckingham.

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Joanna Stafford, a Dominican novice, is the protagonist of The Crown, The Chalice and The Tapestry, set in Tudor England and published in nine countries. The Crown was an Oprah pick for 2012 and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association's Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award.

For the month of June, The Crown is discounted 70 perecent on amazon and Barnes & Noble. Go here.

The third book in the trilogy, The Tapestry, is a finalist for the RWA Daphne du Maurier award for Best Historical Romantic Suspense.

E-Book Price Slashed 70 Percent on THE CROWN

My publisher is discounting the price of the first novel in my series, THE CROWN. The ebook is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble for $3.99.

THE CROWN was shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger award from the Crime Writers' Association. It was an Oprah pick in 2012.

The review said: "Bilyeau deftly weaves extensive historical detail throughout, but the real draw of this suspenseful novel is its juicy blend of lust, murder, conspiracy and betrayal."

To order, go here.

Interview with Janet Wertman on Jane Seymour

By Nancy Bilyeau


Janet Wertman brings the third wife of Henry VIII to life in her new novel, Jane the Quene. It's a thoughtful depiction of Jane Seymour and a moving story of her romance with the king and tragically brief married life. Admirers of Anne Boleyn have sometimes expressed bafflement over how the pale young woman who nobody wanted to marry could capture the love of King Henry VIII when he was still married to one of the most exciting and charismatic women in English history. This novel, without sugarcoating, gives readers a compelling story.

Janet Wertman, a fellow history lover, kindly took time to give an interview on her wonderful novel.

Janet Wertman

What drew you to the Tudor period and to the Seymour family in particular?


I fell in love with the period when I was eight years old and my parents let me stay up late to watch The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R. From then on I was hooked – I tore through every book on the Tudors I could find, fiction and non-fiction, I read all of Wyatt’s poetry, anything about the era. Throughout it all, I have to say that those two series still to me seem to have come extraordinarily close to absolute accuracy – Keith Michell and Glenda Jackson really captured both monarchs from youth to old age, and the other characters were like portraits come to life!

Was Jane Seymour always your favorite of the wives?

I was Team Anne for decades – but the book I wanted to write (her secret diary found and read by Elizabeth) had already been written, so I needed something else. Jane was a convenient stand-in (in art as in life, it seems!) but I came to really appreciate her experience and story.  Now she is certainly my favorite, and the whole Seymour saga (pun intended!) captivates me.

You depict Jane as desperate to marry and resentful of her siblings. How did you come to this conclusion on her character?


It was actually a confluence of facts – the fact that marriage was seen as a woman’s duty; the fact that most women in the Tudor age were married by 17 while Jane was still single at 27 (and without real prospects); the fact that she had seen two younger sisters marry before her; the fact that Chapuys described her as a “woman of little beauty;” and the fact (well, rumors) that Edward was an authoritarian cold fish and her father was a narcissistic lunatic. From there, it wasn’t much of a stretch to believe that Jane was generally undervalued, even by her own family (especially by her own family) and desperate to escape.

One of my favorite aspects of your Queen Jane is her skill at household managing, her "homemaker" abilities. How much of a factor was that in Henry's choosing her?

I believe Henry’s attraction began when the court visited Wolf Hall, and that made me think that Jane’s household management skills were a big factor – not because Henry would have been looking for that specifically, but rather because it was something that Jane was good at and knew she was good at. There is something character-building and confidence-inducing about talent, even if you’re insecure in other ways, and that would have influenced how Henry saw her.

I also believe that this skill meshed with Henry’s interests – he was fascinated by cures and plants (in later years, he was known to grind pearls to mix his own salves). That was also part of their building a real bond.

Finally, it was yet another way in which Jane was the total opposite of Anne Boleyn…

You make a case for Henry VIII becoming attracted to her and valuing her. How do you think she felt deep down about her husband?


He was her savior, I think she adored him. And why wouldn’t she? He was still the “handsomest prince in Christendom,” courtly, witty. You want to talk about Prince Charming, this was King Charming!

That said, I could imagine some fear deep down and well-hidden…especially after he threatened her for pleading for the Pilgrimage of Grace rebels (though interceding for mercy was fully part of the medieval model of queenship). Even so I think she saw him as fundamentally good – she let Cromwell see him as fundamentally evil.

Jane is glad that Anne Boleyn miscarried and she marries the king days after Anne's death. Those are difficult things to handle in a protagonist. Did you struggle with it?

You hit on the central issue of the book – how Jane could have done the things she did. So much of that explanation resides in the mores of the time, and I really tried to show them so that readers could understand and even support Jane through her choices.

First and most important, I absolutely believe that Jane saw herself as an instrument of divine justice and let herself be swept along the path by the symmetry inherent in her situation. Jane was Anne’s opposite, not only on the physical and temperamental levels but in her actions as well. Anne had led England away from the papal fold and Jane hoped to return it to orthodoxy (using the same playbook that Anne herself had written). Anne had tried to hurt Mary, Jane would save her. It was hard not to be a little smug when Anne was universally hated within and outside England and Jane was viewed as a savior by just about everyone.

Even so, marrying Henry right after Anne’s execution was hard to justify. I think Jane probably initially believed the charges to be true – though they didn’t have to be, since anyone who displeased the King was de facto guilty of treason and could and would be executed on that basis alone. By the time her doubts emerged, Jane would have been too worried that the King would be seduced by any one of the other women of the court who were going out feasting with him on his barge every night while Anne was in the Tower.   Even the French Ambassador was trying to push a bride on Henry (he formally offered him the hand of the Princess Madeline the day after Anne’s execution). Henry was the King, he would take a new wife, and nothing else mattered.

Do you think Jane deserves to be Henry's favorite wife, as he seems to have wanted the world to believe?


I honestly don’t believe that Henry would have looked for a fourth wife (or fifth, or sixth) if Jane had lived. He had his contingency plans in place after all (the Act of Succession gave him the right to select his heir if Jane had no sons). Oh, he would have had mistresses, but I don’t think he would have sunk so deeply into madness.

That said, the dynastic aspect to his favoritism overshadows everything. Of course Jane was his favorite wife - she gave him a son. Henry VIII was haunted by the need to fulfill his kingly duty: to give the country a successor to avoid the dynastic wars that would inevitably follow if he didn’t. Jane Seymour was the only one who came through for him. 

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For more information on Janet and her book Jane the Quene, go to her excellent website, where she blogs on Tudor history.

Order Jane the Quene here.

The Nun Who Threatened Henry VIII

By Nancy Bilyeau

The journey that Henry VIII made with Anne Boleyn to Calais in the autumn of 1532 is well known. This was when Henry presented his beloved Anne, newly elevated as Marquess of Pembroke, to the king of France, when the couple may have begun to sleep together, when by all accounts he was most deeply in love with her.


Yet just before leaving England, King Henry had a distinctly unromantic encounter with another woman. He met face-to-face with a female who was roughly Anne Boleyn’s age but was not a courtier’s daughter possessing style and Continental polish. Elizabeth Barton, humbly born, was a Benedictine nun of the Priory of St. Sepulchre, in Canterbury.


Sister Elizabeth was, like many people, loyal to the king’s estranged wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon, and did not want him to marry Anne Boleyn. But unlike the vast majority of English men and women, she was determined to do something about it.

According to a statement taken later, Sister Barton told Henry VIII “she had knowledge by revelation from God that God was highly displeased with our said Sovereign Lord…and in case he desisted not from his proceedings 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 should not be king one day nor one hour, and that he should die a villain’s death…”


Henry VIII’s response to Sister Elizabeth’s threat in 1532 is unknown. But less than two years later, she would be dead, the only nun executed in the reign of the king. She had no trial. The methods that the king and his ministers used to persecute and condemn her for treason set the pattern to be used on others that Henry VIII wanted to destroy. She was the first of the retaliation deaths.


Anne Boleyn

Although she presented a serious obstacle to Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, and was later used as an instrument to bring down the highest-ranking of the king’s critics, Cardinal John Fisher, Sister Elizabeth Barton does not appear in hardly any historical fiction (or TV series or films) taking place in the 1530s except for Wolf Hall in which she is mocked as an attention seeker. She is described dismissively in most works of nonfiction. Tudor historian Geoffrey Elton called her “that deluded prophetess” and, more recently, Geoffrey Moorhouse described her as “the somewhat deranged and visionary serving maid.”


What has undoubtedly diminished the legacy of Sister Elizabeth is the Tudor government’s propaganda machine. A long manuscript was written by Barton’s confessor; a printed tract of her life widely circulated throughout England; an illuminated letter was produced by a monk – all of these documents were destroyed. We cannot read them today. The accepted chroniclers of the 16th century, all of them Protestant, are our sources of her life story, along with a few references made by foreign ambassadors. It is hard to glimpse a view of the human being through the distortions.


Sister Elizabeth’s saga bears some resemblance to Joan of Arc’s, a century earlier. Joan was a peasant who experienced visions. Elizabeth was a servant who fell seriously ill in 1525, lost consciousness, and when she came to, made references to the health of a boy also ill whose fate she could not have had knowledge of. She shared visions that called for veneration of God. Word spread, and those living in Kent began to make pilgrimages. She is supposed to have proclaimed prophecies and performed miracles but we don’t know the details. “She told plainly of divers things done at the church and other places where she was not present, which nevertheless she seemed most likely to behold as if it were with her own eye.”

Church authorities interviewed Elizabeth early on and proclaimed her a genuine mystic. They were not eager to anoint seers; quite the opposite. She was examined rigorously by a series of priests, monks and bishops, all of them on the outlook for “trickery.” The Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham personally saw her and said her visions were genuine. In a letter he described her as a “well -disposed and virtuous woman.” Elizabeth entered the nunnery of St. Sepulchre to be either protected or controlled, depending on how you look at it. “The Holy Maid of Kent” made appearances at a church in Canterbury, and at one point up to 2,000 people jostled to surround her.


What is beyond question is that Elizabeth Barton had some sort of chronic illness for the rest of her life, whether it was physical, neurological or psychiatric. Her visions often came to her while she appeared to be suffering painful fits, writhing on the floor, or in a trance.


Much later, the next archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, known for his skepticism and dislike of superstition, wrote this eyewitness account of Elizabeth’s fit: “Then there was a voice heard speaking within her belly, as if it had been in a tun, her lips not greatly moving, she all that while continuing in a trance. The which voice, when it told everything of the joys of heaven, it spake so sweetly and heavenly that every man was ravished with the hearing thereof. And contrary, when it told anything of hell, it spake so horribly and terribly that it put the hearers in great fear.” In our modern minds, these bizarre breakdowns in health would hurt her credibility. But in the medieval era, holy women were often traumatically ill at the time of experiencing visions.


Elizabeth Barton became famous before Henry VIII launched his famous quest for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. She already had enemies, though. Elizabeth called for obedience to pious works and traditional worship, tenets that were under attack in a Germany transformed by Martin Luther. All of Europe was in turmoil over the spreading religious reform. 

Henry VIII derided Luther in writing and was rewarded by the pope’s proclaiming him “Defender of the Faith.” What’s hard for us to grasp is that, before 1527, it was unthinkable to the world that the king of England would discard his longtime queen or that he would break with Rome. He was an orthodox ruler, an obedient son of the church. Reformer and scholar William Tyndale, living in exile, called Elizabeth a “false, dissembling harlot.” (Protestant opponents often accused Barton of sexual misconduct, without any foundation whatsoever.) Since Henry VIII opposed, hunted down, persecuted and finally killed Tyndale--who died in the flames crying, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes”—Henry Tudor and Sister Elizabeth Barton were on the same side.
Until they weren’t.


The "Holy Maid” did not publicly prophesy against the king. She repeatedly tried to warn him against his course of action, first to his ministers and finally to him in person. In 1528, Barton told Cardinal Wolsey that God commanded her to tell him that if he furthered the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn he would be “utterly destroyed.” (Wolsey was disgraced after he failed to get the king his divorce and died on way to trial.) John Fisher, the churchman who supported Catherine of Aragon, wept with joy when he heard Sister Elizabeth’s visions. Sir Thomas More was more cautious, telling her that her words were “reckless.” Catherine of Aragon herself was careful to never meet or corresponded with Elizabeth, her champion. The embattled queen could see the danger that Elizabeth and her many followers seemed oblivious to.

"The Maid of Kent"

Although he knew of her activities, Henry VIII did not move against the nun for a long time. During one stage he tried to pacify her, even to bribe her. He offered to make her an abbess of her own priory. She refused the offer.


Elizabeth’s fame and influence continued to grow. She met with foreign ambassadors and the papal representative in England. She wrote letters to the pope, urging him to stop the king from divorcing. She had secret meetings with English nobility, including Gertrude Courtenay, the marchioness of Exeter, wife to the king’s first cousin. Collections of Sister Elizabeth’s prophecies were printed and widely circulated.


Barton herself said that she prevented Henry VIII from marrying Anne Boleyn in Calais, as he was rumored to be planning to do. When they did marry, it was in great secret.


It was widely known that Sister Elizabeth predicted if Henry VIII wed Anne, he would soon lose his kingdom and die. After several months had passed and he was very much alive, the king moved against her. Barton and her most devoted followers were arrested and harshly questioned in late 1533. There is no proof of torture, although another woman, Anne Askew, would be racked nearly to death for her religious “crimes” a decade later.

Whatever the means of persuasion, Elizabeth Barton supposedly told her captors what they wanted to hear. She recanted her visions and said, Cranmer wrote, “all was feigned of her own imagination, only to satisfy the minds of them which resorted unto her, and to obtain worldly praise.” This did not save her. Henry VIII directed Parliament to pass a special act condemning her for treason without a hearing. The punishment was death.


Elizabeth Barton, around 30 years of age, was hanged and then beheaded on April 20, 1534, her head fixed on Tower Bridge, the only woman known to be so displayed after death. The head of Cardinal Fisher was later mounted as a warning to others when he was executed for treason, in part because he was charged with conspiring with Elizabeth Barton. Five men were executed with her the same day, all of them priests, monks or parsons who had believed in her prophecies.


This same spring of 1534 was when Henry VIII demanded that the church and the people follow him into schism with Rome. The terms of the Act of Succession were proclaimed everywhere. People were warned that if they said or wrote anything against the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn or his lawful heirs by her, they would be guilty of treason, punishable by death.


All the records of Sister Elizabeth’s confession come from the crown. In 1536, Queen Anne Boleyn would also be turned into a nonperson after execution: letters, documents, portraits destroyed. Because her daughter grew up to be a great queen, Anne’s reputation was restored. This never happened with Elizabeth Barton. She is usually dismissed as a tool of religious plotters, or mentally ill. The possibility that this was a young woman who felt compelled to have a say in the affairs of the kingdom, and possessed the courage to try to interfere, is rarely acknowledged.

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Nancy Bilyeau is the author of the Tudor mystery trilogy The Crown, The Chalice and The Tapestry, on sale in North America, the United Kingdom, German, Spain, and Russia. The main character is Sister Joanna Stafford, a Dominican novice.