Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Killigrew, Catherine

1444230Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 31 — Killigrew, Catherine1892Thomas Finlayson Henderson ‎

KILLIGREW, CATHERINE or KATHERINE, Lady (1530?–1583), a learned lady, wife of Sir Henry Killigrew [q. v.], was the fourth daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, knt. [q. v.], of Giddy Hall, Essex, by Alice, daughter of Sir William Waldegrave, knt., of Suffolk (Visitation of Essex, Harl. Soc. Publ., xiii. 39). Her elder sister was wife of Sir Nicholas Bacon [q. v.] She is said to have been proficient in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. She married Sir Henry Killigrew on 4 Nov. 1565. Sir John Harington, in the notes to book xxxvii. of his translation of ‘Orlando Furioso,’ 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 Dec. 1583 she gave birth to a still-born child, and on 27 Dec. she died. She was buried in the church of St. Thomas the Apostle, London. It was burnt down during the great fire, but Stow, in his ‘Survey,’ has preserved the four Latin inscriptions on her monument, including one by herself and one by Andrew Melville (1545–1622) [q. v.]

[Sir John Harington's Notes to Orlando Furioso; Fuller's Worthies; Ballard's Memoirs of Learned Ladies; Stow's London; Harl. Soc. Registers, vol. vi.; Archæolog. xviii. 100.]

T. F. H.