Joan of Kent (Joan Bocher)

Joan Of Kent (Joan Bocher), a female character who flourished in the first half of the 16th century, and who was condemned to death as a heretic, April 25, 1552, for holding the doctrine that "Christ was not truly incarnate of the Virgin, whose flesh, being sinful, he could not partake of; but the Word, by the consent of the inward man in the Virgin, took flesh of her." This scholastic nicety appalled all the grandees of the English Church, including even Cranmer, who, finding the king slow to approve the condemnation of Joan of Kent, presented to the sovereign the practice of the Jewish Church in stoning blasphemers as a counterpart of the duty of the head of the English Church, and secured the king's approval for the execution of the poor woman, who "could not reconcile the spotless purity of Christ's human nature with his receiving flesh from a sinful creature." See Neal, Puritans, 1, 49; Strype, Memorials of the Reformation, 2, 214.