The first series of happenings that embroiled a number of monks and religious with the government was connected with the career of Elizabeth Barton, the Maid of Kent. It was the lot of this unfortunate woman to be the object of the most diverse judgments when alive, and historians have not succeeded in reaching an agreement which was never achieved by contemporaries. The problem is indeed perplexed beyond hope of certain solution, for not only have we to deal with evidence provided by interested, dishonest and terrified parties, but we are also called upon to make, at least by implication, a spiritual judgment of a kind peculiarly difficult in any age or variety of circumstances. Was Elizabeth Barton, in her days of freedom, a hypocrite, or a hysteric, or a sincere recipient of some kind of supernatural influence, or a mixture of two or more of these characters? Did she in fact, freely and frankly, confess to imposture, or were the words imputed to her falsely or wrested from her by trickery, threats and maltreatment, and twisted into a meaning which she did not intend them to bear? Or was it rather that her faith failed under physical or psychological duress and, once lost, was never recovered? Though the issue may seem trivial, or at least outside the scope of an historian, he cannot avoid making a judgment, at least by implication, for the matter affected the fate and reputation of the Nun's clientèle of monks and friars, of whom the most notable were two monks of Christ Church, Bocking and Dering, and two Franciscan Observants, Risby and Rich, who were closely associated with her career, and shared her fate.