Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today dipping back into my fascination with the lives of women who lived in sixteenth-century England.

When I wrote the first version of what is now my A Who’s Who of Tudor Women in the early 1980s, it was in part because I had done tons of research for the unsold historical novels I’d been writing and didn’t want all that work to go to waste. Then, every time I’d read another biography about someone from that period, I’d find myself taking notes on interesting mentions of women, some of whom turned out to have had much more interesting lives once I realized they had multiple names thanks to multiple marriages and their husbands’ elevations in the peerage.

When I published the three volume print version of the Who’s Who last year I vowed to stop making changes and additions (although I did add an addenda page to KathyLynnEmerson.com). I knew, you see, that many more biographies of sixteenth-century women were bound to be published—the fascination with the century of Henry VIII and his wives, Elizabeth the First, and Shakespeare just never seems to end. In addition, new discoveries are being made all the time as records are found and studied or simply reviewed with fresh eyes.

Katherine Champernowne Astley is a woman I’ve been fascinated by for decades. Way back in the mid-1970s, one of my earliest attempts at writing a novel was a tome titled Dame Katherine’s Army, in which Katherine, known as Kat, Elizabeth Tudor’s governess, was the guiding force behind a group of women devoted to keeping Elizabeth safe during her sister Mary’s reign. Later, I used her as a character in another novel, this one actually published, first as Winter Tapestry and more recently (revised and reissued) as Death of an Intelligence Gatherer. I assigned to her the task of organizing intelligence gathering as it related to plots against Queen Mary that could affect Elizabeth. In all three fictionalizations of the period, I portrayed Kat as clever, resourceful, and devoted to keeping her young charge safe. This interpretation went against the opinions of generations of historians who dismissed Kat’s importance and considered her actions to have been foolish in the extreme.

Here is her mini-bio from A Who’s Who of Tudor Women:

KATHERINE CHAMPERNOWNE (d. July 18, 1565) Known as Kat, Katherine Champernowne’s birth year and parentage are uncertain. Some sources say she was the sister of Joan Champernowne, others identify her (and sometimes, Joan) as the daughter of Sir John Champernowne of Dartington (1458-1503) and Margaret Courtenay (c.1459-1504). She may have been from another branch of the family altogether. No contemporary records refer to Joan and Kat as sisters. What is known is that Kat was appointed as a waiting gentlewoman to the young Elizabeth Tudor in July 1536 and that a letter from Kat to Lord Cromwell written in that same year makes reference to her father, saying he “has much to do with the little living he has,” indicating that he was still alive and was not well-to-do. This seems to eliminate both Sir Philip, who was wealthy, and Sir John, who had died thirty-three years earlier. By the end of 1537, Kat had been made Elizabeth’s governess. In 1545, Kat married John Astley—also spelled Ashley—(c.1507-August 1, 1596), Elizabeth’s senior gentleman attendant. In 1547, when Henry VIII died, the household was combined with that of the Queen Dowager at Chelsea. While there, Kat permitted her charge to go to a party on the Thames at night. The Lord Protector’s wife declared that she was not fit to have governance of the king’s daughter. Kat faced a more serious problem in dealing with a flirtation between Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour (the Queen Dowager’s husband) and the young princess. When it came to light, Elizabeth and her household were sent to Cheshunt. After the Queen Dowager’s death, Kat seems to have believed that a match between the Lord Admiral and the princess could be arranged. She journeyed to London in December 1548 to meet with Seymour. On that same visit she also saw Lady Cheke and Lady Tyrwhitt and was commanded to go to the Lord Protector’s wife, Ann Stanhope, duchess of Somerset. On January 21, 1549, Sir Anthony Denny arrested Kat at Hatfield and conducted her to the Tower. She confessed in February, but not to anything treasonous. She was released thirteen days before Seymour’s execution. By August she had returned to Hatfield. When Mary became queen, Kat’s husband went into exile but Kat remained with the princess until Elizabeth was imprisoned in the Tower in 1554. Kat was allowed to rejoin her in October 1555. Shortly thereafter, a search of Somerset House unearthed a casket full of seditious books and papers. Kat was arrested in May 1556. This time she spent three months in Fleet Prison and after her release was forbidden to see Elizabeth Tudor again. When Mary Tudor died the order was rescinded and Kat was made either First Lady of the Bedchamber or Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber. She may also have served as Mother of Maids until 1562. She was much sought after as a source of information about the new queen and as a go-between to ask favors of the sovereign. Her death distressed Elizabeth greatly. Biography: Oxford DNB entry under “Astley [née Champernowne], Katherine.” Portrait: unknown artist or date, posed with a skull.

It turns out that some of this information is wrong, and I am delighted. Rosemary Griggs’s new biography, Queen Elizabeth I’s Governess, based on extensive research in primary sources, reveals the reality. Kat Astley did not behave as I had my fictional versions of her act . . . but she could have. Griggs provides proof of her intelligence, reassesses the motivations behind some of those “foolish” actions, and finally settles the dispute over who her parents were. It’s simple, really. In common with many families of the period, Sir Philip and and Katherine Carew Champernowne had more than one child with the same first name. Two, in fact. Two Joans, and two Katherines. Documents refer to Kat as “Katherine the elder” and her sister Katherine (mother of Sir Walter Raleigh) as “Katherine the younger.”

There have been many biographies of royal Tudor women published over the years, and new ones keep coming. There have been far fewer written about non-royal women of the era, and many of those have been short on details about the subject of the biography. It is necessary, of course, to provide context for the life story in question, and some educated guesses are also necessary, given the refusal of early (mostly male) historians to take an interest in the lives of non-royal women, but Griggs’s biography has much more detail about its subject’s life than most, and she chooses to focus, when details are scarce, on Kat’s family and close associates rather than generalized history, giving the reader a clearer insight into Kat’s world and how she would have viewed the events she lived through.

The picture that emerges, well documented, shows a woman who was politically savvy, a steadying influence on her young royal charge, and an influential figure at court once Elizabeth became queen. Griggs’s text and footnotes provide sources and she includes a extensive bibliography. The book as a whole is an impressive accomplishment, and I’m not just saying that because she lists my Who’s Who in her bibliography.

My copy of Queen Elizabeth I’s Governess, pictured here, is festooned with flags, every one indicating a page where Griggs included some tidbit of information I had not previously encountered about one or more of the women I include in the Whos’ Who. Most of these new-to-me details will eventually be added, with attribution, to the addenda page at my website. Any time new facts emerge, I am delighted to hear about them, even when they reveal that my interpretation of the old facts was wrong.

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.