Lady Katherine Ferrers

Katherine Ferrers (4 May 1634 – c. 13 June 1660) was an English gentlewoman and heiress. According to popular legend, she was also the "Wicked Lady", a highwaywoman who terrorised the English county of Hertfordshire before dying from gunshot wounds sustained during a robbery. History Katherine Ferrers was born on 4 May 1634 at Bayford in Hertfordshire to Knighton Ferrers and his wife, the former Katherine (or Catherine) Walters, and heiress to a considerable fortune. The Ferrers family were fervent Protestants and great favourites of both Henry VIII and Edward VI; the latter granted them extensive properties in Hertfordshire, including Bayford, Ponsbourne, Agnells, the family mansion at Flamstead, and the manor house of Markyate Cell at Markyate. Knighton Ferrers died in 1640, and Katherine's grandfather, Sir George Ferrers, died soon after. Katherine's brother, who was the heir to the family fortunes, had died young, so by court decree in October 1640, she was appointed sole heir to her grandfather's estates. Her widowed mother married Sir Simon Fanshawe later that same year. The Fanshawe family were committed Royalists, and when the Civil War broke out in 1642, Simon, his new wife and stepdaughter joined King Charles I in Oxford, his wartime capital. Her mother died that winter, leaving eight-year-old Katherine in the care of her stepfather. As the fighting continued, Fanshawe was at the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, and was taken prisoner two years later. During this time Katherine was made a ward of the court by Simon Fanshawe's brother, Richard, and his wife Ann. She was then sent to live with Simon's sister, Alice, at Hamerton in Huntingdonshire. In 1643 the Sequestration Committee placed estates of known Royalists in the hands of local commissioners, and their rents and other income were kept by Parliament. Unlike Parliament, the Royalist party was dependent on voluntary contributions, involuntary fines and any other means of raising funds, such as looting. The Fanshawes had contributed heavily to the Royalist cause, and now found their assets cut. The family then arranged for orphaned Katherine, heir to the Ferrers estates, to marry Thomas Fanshawe, her stepfather's nephew, when she reached a marriageable age. In April 1648, when she was just shy of 14, the ceremony took place at Hamerton, whereupon her 16-year-old husband took control of her considerable fortune.