HOLY MAID OF KENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20870, 9 November 1929, Page 28

HOLY MAID OF KENT.

A TRADITION THAT LIVES. Just where, the Weald of Kent is bounded on the north by a line of grassy cliff, near the Lympiie Aerodrome and Sir Philip Sassoon’s beautiful gardens, there stands a little, roofless, ■weedcovered ruin, the Chapel of Our Lady ip Court-at-street (writes a correspondent in the Daily Telegraph). Its walls are built of hard grey stone dug from the surrounding soil, and nearby watercresses grow freely in a lonely pond, around which sheep browse and rabbits burrow undisturbed above the marsh that stretched hazy and silent, to the sea. There was a time when this hillside was crowded with hundreds. of peasantfolk from far and near, and among them moved a woman, Elizabeth Barton, “ the Maid of Kent..” She was in the service of one, Thomas Cobb, whose house, a mile away, at Aldington, is conspicuous with rows of dark oak beams down its white-washed front. Pictures come before the mind—of the Maid pouring forth her frenzied utterances against vice and sin; of her “inspired” political prophecies; and of the gentler side of her nature when she laid her bands upon the sick and healed them; and then of a confession of fraud and her execution because she had forecast evil to King Henry VIII if he divorced Catherine. There is no doubt that Elizabeth was physically and mentally abnormal. The monks who-took charge of her when sin: began to attract attention were certainly guilty of using her prophetic and curative powers for their own ends. Though it may seem incredible that anyone to-day should care about the words of this poor scullery-wench, or her drastic heaven and hell, if a stranger were to ask for some watercress from the stream near the ruined chapel the answer would certainly be, "No one oats the cress from that pond, for there the Holy Maid was wont to wash the pilgrims’ feet:” She still lives, honoured in local tradition, who was condemned by the Star Chamber as a heretic and hanged at Tyburn 400 years ago.