Katherine Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon

Katherine Hastings (née Dudley), Countess of Huntingdon (c. 1538 From her mother's will it appears that she was still under 12 years of age in January 1555, Similarly, Francis Drake gave Elizabeth a diamond-set frog jewel when she visited his ship the Golden Hind at Deptford in April 1581.

Career as an educator For many years she lived with her husband in the English Midlands and Yorkshire, where she dedicated herself to the education of young women of the nobility and gentry. Among her pupils were the diarist Margaret Hoby, memoirist Dionys Fitzherbert, and her brother Robert's stepdaughters, the sisters Penelope and Dorothy Devereux. Like her husband, the Countess was a convinced Protestant with Puritan leanings. she lived at court and became one of the closest friends of the old Queen. She was attending the queen privately twice a day in February 1598. Her differences with the new earl, George Hastings, 4th Earl of Huntingdon, over her jointure and her husband's debts were settled on 15 February, and he would have the Savoy House. Death Katherine, Countess of Huntingdon died at Chelsea, London on 14 August 1620, and was buried in her mother's tomb at Chelsea Old Church.

Ancestry