as a true
Micajah, warned him, that the dogs would lick his blood, as they had
done Ahab's."[*] The king took no notice of the insult; but allowed
the preacher to depart in peace. Next Sunday he employed Dr. Corren to
preach before him; who justified the king's proceedings, and gave Peyto
the appellations of a rebel, a slanderer, a dog, and a traitor. Elston,
another friar of the same house, interrupted the preacher, and told
him that he was one of the lying prophets, who sought to establish by
adultery the succession of the crown; but that he himself would justify
all that Peyto had said. Henry silenced the petulant friar; but showed
no other mark of resentment than ordering Peyto and him to be summoned
before the council, and to be rebuked for their offence.[**] He even
here bore patiently some new instances of their obstinacy and arrogance:
when the earl of Essex, a privy councillor, told them that they deserved
for their offence to be thrown into the Thames, Elston replied that the
road to heaven lay as near by water as by land.[***]

* Strype, vol. i. p. 167.

** Collier, vol. ii. p. 86. Burnet, vol. i. p. 151.

*** Stowe, p. 562

But several monks were detected in a conspiracy, which, as it might have
proved more dangerous to the king, was on its discovery attended with
more fatal consequences to themselves. Elizabeth Barton, of Aldington,
in Kent, commonly called the "holy maid of Kent," had been subject to
hysterical fits, which threw her body into unusual convulsions; and
having produced an equal disorder in her mind, made her utter strange
sayings, which, as she was scarcely conscious of them during the time,
had soon after entirely escaped her memory. The silly people in the
neighborhood were struck with these appearances, which they imagined to
be supernatural; and Richard Masters, vicar of the parish, a designing
fellow, founded on them a project, from which he hoped to acquire both
profit and consideration. He went to Warham, archbishop of Canterbury,
then alive; and having given him an account of Elizabeth's revelations,
he so far wrought on that prudent but superstitious prelate, as to
receive orders from him to watch her in her trances, and carefully to
note down all her future sayings. The regard paid her by a person of so
high a rank, soon rendered her still more the object of attention to the
neighborhood; and it was easy for Masters to persuade them, as well as
the maid herself,