Elizabeth Barton was a serving maid in the house of the Archbishop of Canterbury at Aldington in Kent. Her religious exhortations, prophecies and alleged miracles, during or following "trances", which were similar in description to epileptic fits, attracted attention to her widely and she became known as the 'Holy Maid of Kent'.

Nothing more may have come of Elizabeth's prophecies than some local notoriety had she not prophesied the downfall of a monarch concious that his claim to the throne lay in his father's conquest of it.

She became a nun at Canterbury where she prophesied that King Henry VIII would lose his throne if he persued his intended divorce Catherine of Aragon. It is likely that this simple servant was put up to this disasterous prophesy by local opponents of the divorce who did not dare to voice their own opinions publicly.

Other accounts claim that Elizabeth was accused and found guilty of treason.

Elizabeth was arrested, together with some of her associates, and, after alleged confessions of fraud, they were all hanged at Tyburn.

At Court-at-Street, a hamlet near to her Aldington home, a chapel was set apart for Elizabeth Barton and became a famous place of pilgrimage in the 16th century.