Ominous symptoms of eccentric agitation, however, began to take shape in the confusion, A preacher, calling himself the favourite of the Virgin Mary, had started up at Edinburgh, professing miraculous powers of abstinence from food.  This man was sent by James V. to Rome, where, after having been examined by Clement, and having sufficiently proved his mission, he was furnished with a priest’s habit and a certificate under leaden seal.[308] Thus equipped, he went a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and loaded himself with palm-leaves and with stones from the pillar at which Christ was scourged; and from thence making his way to England, he appeared at Paul’s Cross an evident saint and apostle, cursing the king and his divorce, denouncing his apostacy, and threatening the anger of Heaven.  He was arrested and thrown into prison, where he remained, as it was believed, fifty days without food, or fed in secret by the Virgin, At the close of the time the government thought it prudent to send him back to Scotland, without further punishment.[309]

Another more famous prophetess was then in the zenith of her reputation—­the celebrated Nun of Kent—­whose cell at Canterbury, for some three years, was the Delphic shrine of the Catholic oracle, from which the orders of Heaven were communicated even to the pope himself.  This singular woman seems for a time to have held in her hand the balance of the fortunes of England.  By the papal party she was universally believed to be inspired.  Wolsey believed it, Warham believed it, the bishops believed it, Queen Catherine believed it, Sir Thomas More’s philosophy was no protection to him against the same delusion; and finally, she herself believed the world, when she found the world believed in her.  Her story is a psychological curiosity; and, interwoven as it was with the underplots of the time, we cannot observe it too accurately.

In the year 1525, there lived in the parish of Aldington, in Kent, a certain Thomas Cobb, bailiff or steward to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who possessed an estate there.  Among the servants of this Thomas Cobb was a country girl called Elizabeth Barton—­a decent person, so far as we can learn, but of mere ordinary character, and until that year having shown nothing unusual in her temperament.  She was then attacked, however, by some internal disease; and after many months of suffering, she was reduced into that abnormal and singular condition, in which she exhibited the phenomena known to modern wonder-seekers as those of somnambulism or clairvoyance.  The scientific value of such phenomena is still undetermined, but that they are not purely imaginary is generally agreed.  In the histories of all countries and of all times, we are familiar with accounts of young women of bad health and irritable nerves, who have exhibited at recurring periods certain unusual powers; and these exhibitions have had especial attraction for superstitious persons, whether they have believed in God, or in the