Magdalen Dacre

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Magdalen Dacre
Viscountess Montagu
BornJanuary 1538
Naworth Castle,
Maid of Honour

Magdalen Dacre, Viscountess Montagu (January 1538 – 8 April 1608) was an English noblewoman.

Maid of Honour at the wedding of Mary I of England to Philip II of Spain in Winchester Cathedral. Dacre, despite being a Catholic, managed to remain in high regard with the Protestant Tudor Queen who succeeded Mary, Elizabeth I. Dacre was, according to biographer Lady Antonia Fraser in her historical biography, The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605, a fine example of "how the most pious Catholic could survive if he (or she) did not challenge the accepted order".[2]

Early life

Magdalen Dacre was born in January 1538 at

Edward VI), with his third wife Jane Seymour
just months prior to the birth of Magdalen. Despite the Protestant Reformation sweeping the country, Magdalen Dacre, along with her siblings, were raised Roman Catholic by her family.

Dacre's paternal grandparents were

Carlisle
.

Dacre served as a gentlewoman to Anne Sapcote, Countess of Bedford when she was 13.[5]

At the court of Mary I

Magdalen Dacre took part in the bridal procession at the wedding of Mary I (pictured) to Philip II of Spain in 1554

In 1553 Edward VI, the boy king who succeeded Henry VIII, died after six years on the throne, aged 15, the same as Dacre.

Maid of Honour and took part in the bridal procession.[2] As a gentlewoman at Mary's court, she was mentioned in verses by Richard Edwardes,[6] who compared her height to the legendary Andromache:

Dacre is not dangerous, her talk is nothing coy,
Her noble stature may compare with Hector's wife of Troy.[7]

Hector's wife's name "Andromache" in Greek means "man-fighter". Dacre was described as having been very pretty and blonde. She was also very tall, and reportedly stood a head above the other maids of honour at court.[8] According to her biography by Richard Smith, she attracted the attention of Philip, whom she had to beat off with a staff when he tried to embrace her.[9]

List of siblings

  • Thomas Dacre, 4th Baron Dacre of Gilsland (1527/1530- 1 July 1566), married firstly Elizabeth Neville, and secondly Elizabeth Leyburne, by whom he had five children, including George Dacre, 5th Baron Dacre of Gilsland, 4th Baron Greystoke, and Anne Dacre, later Countess of Arundel (21 March 1557 – 19 April 1630). When Thomas died, his widow remarried Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk.
  • Northern Rebellion
    and had to flee England.
  • Frances Dacre (b. 1523)
  • Anne Dacre (1521- July 1581), married Henry Clifford, 2nd Earl of Cumberland by whom she had six children.
  • Dorothy Dacre (b. 1533), married Sir Thomas Windsor by whom she had one daughter, Anne Windsor.
  • George Dacre (b. 1534)
  • Eleanor Dacre, married Henry Jerningham, Esq., of Cotesby Hall by whom she had issue.
  • Mary Dacre (b. 1539), married Sir Alexander Culpepper of Bedgebury, by whom she had one son, Sir Anthony Culpepper of Bedgebury.
  • Edward Dacre (d. 1579). He joined his brother in the Northern Rebellion.
  • Sir Francis Dacre (d. 1632), married Dorothy Radcliffe by whom he had issue.

Marriage

Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montagu, husband of Magdalen Dacre, in 1569

On 15 July 1558, Dacre married

Cowdray Castle and Battle Abbey, both in Sussex
. Anthony and Magdalen had ten children.

Following the accession of Queen

Privy Council but was made joint Lord Lieutenant of Sussex in 1570. With the return to Protestant Christianity, the Montagus were forced to reveal their stance on the situation: loyalty to the Pope, or to the new Protestant Queen. Browne, along with Lord Dacre (Magdalen's brother), declared that they would support the Pope if he came in peace, but would serve the Queen if he came with war-like intentions.[11] Magdalen found favour with the Queen despite her Catholicism, her former close friendship with the late Queen Mary and later the treacherous behaviour of her Dacre relations, some of whom conspired to depose the Queen and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. The Montagus entertained the Queen for a week at Cowdray Castle in 1591,[12] and the priests were kept hidden during the visit.[13] Magdalen was very devout and supposedly wore a coarse linen smock underneath her extravagant court costumes.[13]

Dacre was only once accused of recusancy, and although she allowed a printing press to be set up on her property,[14] she refused to assist or abet treasonous plots against the Queen.[13]

Dacre died at Battle Abbey, Sussex on 8 April 1608 at the age of seventy.[15] She was originally buried in Midhurst Church, where a splendid tomb with her effigy was erected. The tomb was moved in 1851 to Easebourne Church.

Issue

  • Philip Browne (born 1559). He is assumed to have died young.
  • Sir Henry Browne (1562- 6 February 1628). He married firstly Mary Hungate, and secondly Anne Catesby by whom he had issue; he was the ancestor of the Browne baronets of Kiddington
  • Sir George Browne, married Elizabeth Lawe, by whom he had issue.
  • Sir Anthony Browne, married Anne Bell
  • Jane Browne, married Sir Francis Lacon
  • Mary Browne
  • Elizabeth Browne (died after 29 September 1623), married Robert Dormer, 1st Baron Dormer of Wing by whom she had issue.
  • Mabel Browne
  • Thomas Browne
  • William Browne
  • Anthony Browne (born 1570)

Ancestry


In arts

William Byrd (ca. 1540-1623) who had turned catholic some 30 year earlier, composed an elegy to Dacre on the year of her death, With lilies white (1608), which has remained as a famous piece of his consort music.

In fiction

Dacre appears in Anya Seton's historical romance Green Darkness, which was partially set in 16th-century England.

References

Footnotes

  1. ISBN 1108019722
    .
  2. ^ a b Fraser 2002, p. 28
  3. ^ DACRE (V. Montague) "Magdalen Dacre, Viscountess Montagu". Tudor Place. Retrieved 25 August 2010. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  4. ^ DACRE (3º B. Gillesland/ 2º B. Greystoke) "William Dacre". Tudor Place. Retrieved 25 August 2010. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  5. ^ Sister Joseph Damien Hanlon, 'These be but women', Charles Howard Carter, From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation: Essays in Honor of Garrett Mattingly (Random House, 1965), p. 375.
  6. ^ Thomas Park, Nugae Antiquae, 2 (London, 1804), 393 citing BL Cotton Titus A. xxiv.
  7. ^ Ros King, The Collected Works of Richard Edwards: Politics, Poetry and Performance in Sixteenth-Century England (Manchester, 2001), pp. 19, 188, 232.
  8. ^ E. S. Turner, The Court of St. James (Michael Joseph, 1959), p. 79.
  9. ^ Richard Smith, The life of the most honourable and vertuous lady the Lady Magdalen Viscountesse Montague (St Omer, 1627), p. 19
  10. ^ Carolly Erickson "Bloody Mary", p.294
  11. ^ Fraser 2002, p. 29
  12. ^ Cowdray ruins: a short history and guide.
  13. ^ a b c Emerson
  14. ^ Elizabeth Patton, 'Women, Books, and the Lay Apostate', in Leah Knight, Micheline White, Elizabeth Sauer, Women's Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation (Michigan, 2018), p. 132.
  15. ^ Worldroots.com

Sources

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