English Reformation: 'Katherine Willoughby, the Puritan Duchess (1519-80)'

By A.G. Haykin - Posted at Evangelical Times:

‘[She] was born a Catholic and became a convinced and zealous Puritan; she was born to a sheltered and secure life and, by her own honesty and outspokenness, she courted persecution and lived in danger. She was a woman of wit and beauty and charm, and of great integrity… Many whose thinking and writing and preaching were basic to the Protestant Reformation owed much to her generosity and religious zeal and to the stimulus of her eager mind’.

So writes the biographer, Evelyn Read of Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk. Historian Alec Ryrie described her as an ‘evangelical firebrand’, perhaps ‘the most aggressive of the reformers’ within Henry VIII’s royal circle.

Read more about Katherine here.