For three years she continued her extraordinary career of fraud and blasphemy, and then the heavy hand of the King descended upon her and her accomplices. One can only feel surprised that it had been delayed so long, for Henry the Eighth was not usually long-suffering under insult.
She was hanged, with Doctor Bocking and others of her accomplices in religious deceptions and political offences, April 21st, 1534, at Tyburn. “Hither,” said she, in her dying speech and confession, “I am come to die. I have been not only the cause of mine own death, which most justly I have deserved, but am also the cause of the death of all these persons who at this time here suffer. And yet I am not so much to be blamed, considering that it was well known unto these learned men that I was a poor wench without learning, and therefore they might have easily perceived that the things which were done by me could not proceed in no such sort; but their capacities and learning could right well judge that they were altogether feigned. But because the things which I feigned were profitable unto them, therefore they much praised me, and bare me in hand that it was the Holy Ghost, and not I that did them.”
This, with much else, she confessed, admitting among other things that a letter purporting to have been written by the Virgin Mary, in heaven, and sent to a widow in London, was written by a St. Augustine’s monk named Hawkhurst.
Aldington church tower rises in stately massiveness amid the plain of Aldington Frith—“Aldington Fright,” as the country people call it. It is a noble, though an unfinished building, begun about 1507, and in progress until 1537. Those were not favourable times for new church works, and the Archbishop’s palace—one of his many palaces—close by, dated its decay from the same period. Nothing is left of his park of more than a thousand acres, and of the palace itself, its five kitchens, eight dove-houses, six stables, nine barns, and other appurtenances on an equally generous scale, nothing now remains but some few architectural fragments built into the walls of a comparatively modern house.
Aldington is notable not only from its connection with the story of the Holy Maid, but also because Erasmus was rector here for a short period. His appointment in 1511 by Archbishop Warham was something in the nature of a scandal, however well-meaning its object, which was to provide him, as a learned, but poor, scholar, with a livelihood. Erasmus was a Dutchman, quite ignorant of the English language, however well versed in Latin; and either his awakened conscience, or the growing indignation of the people of Aldington at having a tongue-tied alien thrust upon them, presently led to his resigning. A charge of £20 per annum, then a large sum, fully equal to £200 present value, was then made upon the living, and paid by his successor for his support. After a short interval, Richard Masters, who figured prominently in the affair of the Holy Maid, was appointed, and with varying fortunes he held the rectory until his death, in 1558.
Beyond this we may fitly turn down again to the Marsh, past Bonnington church, a tiny building standing close beside the Military Canal. Thence across the levels, by winding roads, the way goes to Newchurch, “new” so long ago that the origin is lost in antiquity. It is a typical Marshland village, and the heavy tower of the church itself leans forward in a manner suggesting imminent collapse. It has probably suggested the same idea for three hundred years, or more; and so there is certainly no immediate danger. Hereabouts the sheep are the chief animate objects. Romney Marsh was ever a region famous for its flocks, and from the earliest times the smugglers who smuggled wool out of the country, regardless of the strict penal laws against the exportation of fleeces, were more important than those who smuggled goods inwards. They had their own special designation, and were known as “owlers,” probably in the first instance from their signalling in the night with calls like those of the owls.
BONNINGTON CHURCH.
There are no “shepherds” here, on the Marsh. They are, in local parlance, “lookers.” When the agricultural labourer in these parts takes up with “ship,” he announces, “I be a-going a-lookering”; lookering being, in fact, a variety of shepherding peculiar to these surroundings, with special terms and conditions.
To trace these byways of the Marsh in spring, say in the third week of May, when the thorn-trees are in bloom, is an experience to be remembered; it is the best time of all the year to see Romney Marsh. Then such remote spots as Ivychurch, in the very middle of it, seem idyllic. “Ivychurch” does not, by the way, take its name, as might be supposed, from ivy, but has its root in “ea,” for water, having originally been situated on an islanded knoll ever so little raised above the level of the wet marshes. The term “Marsh,” it should be said, survives although the roads and byways are now as dry as those of other scenes, thanks to the constant care of the jurats and other officers whose functions are to keep the dykes deeply delved, the sluices in order, and Dymchurch Wall in repair. In default of these, Romney Marsh, or the greater portion of it, would again be drowned, for it is at a lower level than the sea.