Lady Catherine Killigrew ( 1530 – 27 December 1583) was an English gentlewoman and scholar, the wife of

Sir Henry Killigrew Sir Henry Killigrew (c. 1528Bell pp. 189–190 – 1603) was a Cornish diplomat and an ambassador for the Kingdom of England in the sixteenth century. He was several times employed by Elizabeth I in Scottish affairs and served as one of the Eng ...

Biography

Catherine was the fourth daughter of

Sir Anthony Cooke Sir Anthony Cooke (1504 – 11 June 1576) was an English people, English Renaissance humanism, humanist scholar. He was tutor to Edward VI of England, Edward VI. Family Anthony Cooke was the only son of John Cooke (died 10 October 1516), esqui ...

and Alice, daughter of Sir William Waldegrave. Her older sister

Anne Anne, alternatively spelled Ann, is a form of the Latin female given name Anna. This in turn is a representation of the Hebrew Hannah, which means 'favour' or 'grace'. Related names include Annie. Anne is sometimes used as a male name in the ...

was the wife of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and another sister Mildred was the wife of Lord Burghley. Catherine was said to have been proficient in

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, and

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

. Lady Catherine married Sir Henry on 4 November 1565, and had four surviving daughters. Sir John Harington, in the notes to his translation of ''

Orlando Furioso ''Orlando furioso'' (; ''The Frenzy of Orlando'', more loosely ''Raging Roland'') is an Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was no ...

'', has preserved some Latin lines in which she asked her sister Mildred, wife of Cecil, Lord Burghley, to use her influence to get her husband excused from going on an embassy to France. The verses were reprinted in Fuller's ''Worthies''. On 21 December 1583, she gave birth to a stillborn child, and on 27 December she died. She was buried in the church of St. Thomas the Apostle, London. It was burnt down during the

great fire of London The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past the ...

, but Stow, in his ''Survey'', preserved the four Latin inscriptions on her monument, including one by herself and one by

Andrew Melville Andrew Melville (1 August 1545 – 1622) was a Scottish scholar, theologian, poet and religious reformer. His fame encouraged scholars from the European continent to study at Glasgow and St. Andrews. He was born at Baldovie, on 1 August 154 ...

Notes

References

* Attribution: * 1530s births 1583 deaths 16th-century English women writers 16th-century English writers {{England-bio-stub