enth century, when
demoniacal possession was the explanation usually received even of ordinary
insanity, we can well believe that the temptation must have been great to
recognise supernatural agency in a manifestation far more uncommon; and
that the difficulty of retaining the judgment in a position of equipoise
must have been very great not only to the spectators but still more to the
subject of the phenomenon herself. To sustain ourselves continuously under
the influence of reason, even when our faculties are preserved in their
natural balance, is a task too hard for most of us. We cannot easily make
too great allowance for the moral derangement likely to follow, when a weak
girl suddenly found herself possessed of powers which she was unable to
understand. Bearing this in mind, for it is only just that we should do so,
we continue the story.

This Elizabeth Barton, then, "in the trances, of which she had divers and
many,[310] consequent upon her illness, told wondrously things done and
said in other places whereat she was neither herself present, nor yet had
heard no report thereof." To simple-minded people who believed in Romanism
and the legends of the saints, the natural explanation of such a marvel
was, that she must be possessed either by the Holy Ghost or by the devil.
The archbishop's bailiff, not feeling himself able to decide in a case of
so much gravity, called in the advice of the parish priest, one Richard
Masters; and together they observed carefully all that fell from her. The
girl had been well disposed, as the priest probably knew. She had been
brought up religiously; and her mind running upon what was most familiar to
it, "she spake words of marvellous holyness in rebuke of sin and
vice;"[311] or, as another account says, "she spake very godly certain
things concerning the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments."[312]
This seemed satisfactory as to the source of the inspiration. It was
clearly not a devil that spoke words against sin, and therefore, as there
was no other alternative, it was plain that God had visited her. Her powers
were assuredly from heaven; and it was plain, also, by a natural sequence
of reasoning, that she held some divine commission, of which her
clairvoyance was the miracle in attestation.

An occurrence of such moment was not to be kept concealed in the parish of
Aldington. The priest mounted his horse, and rode to Lambeth with the news
to the Archbishop of Canterbury; an