From the Telegraph Online:<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n