The prevailing superstitions of the day and their reality as factors even in public life are curiously illustrated by the story of the "Nun of Kent" --a story concluded by her execution about this time. The "Nun" was a young woman named Elizabeth Barton of humble birth, who was subject to fits or trances, presumably epileptic in character, in which trances she gave vent to utterances which were supposed to be inspired, being generally religious in their bearing. Having acquired some notoriety and a reputation for sanctity, her prophesyings before long took the form of denunciation of the divorce, at that time in its earlier stages. She was exploited by sundry fanatical persons honest or otherwise--in such cases it is seldom possible to fathom the extent to which mania, intentional deception, conscious or unconscious suggestion, and mere credulity, are mingled. In those days, there were few people who would venture to attribute such phenomena to purely natural causes. Such a man as Thomas More, who was eminently rational as well as deeply religious, was not easily beguiled; but the more credulous and equally honest bishop of Rochester was unable to regard the prophesyings as mere imposture, as was also the case with Warham; and being thus countenanced, when the Nun's utterances reached the point of denouncing the wrath of Heaven upon those who consented to the Divorce, she became really dangerous. She and her associates were charged with treason and executed, while Fisher was necessarily to some degree implicated. Before her death the Nun made a confession of elaborate imposture, but too much weight should not be attached to confessions made under such conditions. Given a certain degree of mental aberration, the case is not without parallels pointing to an absence of conscious fraud. But whether in her case it was fraud or mania, the important fact remains that there were numbers of people who attributed her utterances neither to the one nor the other but to inspiration; numbers more who were in doubt on the point; and that those utterances were to some extent utilised in a seditious propaganda; for to declare as a message from on high that the King and his advisers had brought upon themselves the curse of the Almighty must be recognised as effectively, even if not intentionally, preaching sedition. [Sidenote 1: The Act of Succession] [Sidenote 2: The oath refused]