From the Telegraph Online:
Among the eminent people added this month to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (that endless labyrinth stuffed with curiosities) is a woman from the Tudor age who stands out for the strength of her perseverance against calamities. Her name was Katherine Palmer.
She was born early in the reign of Henry VIII. Her mother’s family had lived at Ightham Mote, the stone, timber and moated house in Kent, now in the care of the National Trust. Katherine gave up life among the gentry to join the monastery of Syon at Isleworth, on the Thames, where the Duke of Northumberland’s house now stands.
Syon was unusual because it was ruled by a woman, as a double foundation of 60 nuns, and a separate house of 24 brothers, some of whom acted as chaplains to the nuns. At this abbey, each half walled around in its own cloisters, nuns and monks lived a life of contemplative prayer.
…
These houses of prayer, trusted by successive kings and least in need of reform, were among the first targets for Henry VIII’s resentment over the matter of the divorce of Katharine of Aragon and his desire for plunder. Richard Reynolds, a monk of Syon, was hanged, drawn and quartered along with the Prior of the London Charterhouse and his fellows on May 4 1535.
Syon held together until 1539, when it was suppressed through Thomas Cromwell’s energy. Alone among English nunneries of which we have records, the sisters continued to live as best they could under the rule of their foundress in small groups, at first in England, then abroad. Katherine Palmer was a leader in these attempts.
Tip o’ the wimple to Foose for the recommendation of the article
I had a bit of an ulterior motive in inveigling Lara to post this. Elizabeth of York had a much younger sister named Bridget, who apparently was dedicated to the religious life even as an infant, which accounts for the oddity of her name. I always wondered why she didn’t go to Syon, the Bridgettine House, which would be logical in view of her name, instead of being shipped downriver to Dartford, the Dominican Priory, when she was either 7 or 10 (my sources conflict). Here she lived and died as “a common nun” when you would think as a royal personage she might have had a much grander convent office.
Bridget was born in 1480, when Elizabeth Woodville would have been well into her forties and perhaps at risk for having an infant with impairments. I am curious to learn whether perhaps Bridget was born with some sort of birth defect or deformity, which would have made her parents decide almost immediately on her future as a nun. Possibly she could read, as her grandmother Cicely bequeathed her books on St. Catherine of Siena and St. Margaret (I don’t know if they were in Latin or English), so that might rule out a mental disability; but perhaps she might have been physically impaired to the degree that her family or Henry VII might have wanted her at a distance (Dartford rather than Syon), or was rendered ineligible for a convent office. She’s very shadowy and I haven’t seen any evidence that she was not perfectly healthy (there are records that she visited Elizabeth of York as queen), but I thought it odd that Bridget was dedicated to the Church at so young an age, when a marriageable princess would always have been useful to her parents, even if she married an English nobleman rather than a Continental prince.
If anyone has any theories about Bridget, I’d certainly like to hear them.
I feel so used! Just kidding, of course. 🙂
That’s a really interesting question… I have only tangentially heard Bridget’s name, but never really gave her much thought.
Yes, Bridget’s case is curious. She died in 1517 but there’s no mention of any funeral or obsequies. You’d think with the Tudors being on fairly matey terms with the Pope at that stage that Henry VII or Henry VIII would have been glad to advertise having a close relation in the Church. And there’s no indication that Catherine of Aragon, very pious in the Spanish tradition, ever went to visit her, or either of her royal nieces.
There is one parallel from the reign of Edward I — he had a lot of daughters, too, and one of them, Mary, went to the convent at Amesbury at the age of 7, apparently at the insistence of her grandmother. But Mary seems to have had much more of a presence and personality than Bridget — visiting, going on pilgrimage, out and about as much as possible because she apparently had a substantial personal income and no actual vocation.