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1531.] inquire of her the will of God, and to ask the benefit of her intercessory prayers, for which also they did not fail to pay at a rate commensurate with their credulity.

This position the Nun of Kent, as she was now called, had achieved for herself, when the divorce question was first agitated. The monks at the Canterbury priory, of course, eagerly espoused the side of the Queen, and the Nun's services were at once in active requisition. Absurd as the stories of her revelations may seem to us, she had already given evidence that she was no vulgar impostor, and in the dangerous career on which she now entered, she conducted herself with the utmost skill and audacity. Far from imitating the hesitation of the Pope and the bishops, she issued boldly, 'in the name and by the authority of God,' a solemn prohibition against the King; threatening that, if he divorced his wife, he should not 'reign a month, but should die a villain's death.' Burdened with this message, she forced herself into the