This poor girl is Elizabeth Barton, Maid of Kent.
We have to ask ourselves, was she used to further the purposes of others?
It was probably Edward Bocking who first saw Elizabeth 'potential' as a weapon against Protestantism suggesting that she enter a convent, a place where he knew her visions would intensify. Then there's Fisher and More, did they believe in her or was she used by them to intimidate the king. Cromwell and Cranmer also used her as a means to an end.
Whilst lying in her sick bed, Elizabeth Barton had a vision telling her that it was the will of God that King Henry VIII should not marry Ann Boleyn. It was 1525, Elizabeth was nineteen years old and a servant in the small village of Aldington in Kent. She had been ill, and it was during this time that she was said to fall in and out of a trance like state. Her local priest who was convinced that her visions were genuine, informed William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who sent a three clergy, including Edward Bocking to examine her.
When Elizabeth's suddenly recovered her health after a prediction that the Virgin Mary would cure her, she began a journey that would ultimately end her life.
Elizabeth Barton was beheaded at Tyburn on the 20th April, 1534 . Her head was put on a spike on London Bridge, she was the first woman in history to be degraded in this way.
She is buried at Greyfriars.
Of Elizabeth herself, she was a young girl with no education, a sincere, faithful innocent. She believed in her visions but at the hands of the unscrupulous became a deluded hysteric.