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

Biography

Catherine was the fourth daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke and Alice, daughter of Sir William Waldegrave. Her older sister

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

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 (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

Greek Greek may refer to: 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 of all kno ...

, and

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

. 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'') 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 not published in its complete form ...

'', 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 Wednesday 5 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old London Wall, Roman city wall, while also extendi ...

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

Notes

References

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