Lady Katherine Ferrers

Katherine Ferrers was born in 1634 into a Hertfordshire landowning family and inherited property while still young. She married Thomas Fanshawe, later Viscount Fanshawe, and died in 1660. Her short life fell across the English Civil Wars and the political and financial disruption that affected many gentry families.

Later tradition identified Katherine with the “Wicked Lady”, a masked highwaywoman said to have robbed travellers around Markyate. The connection is famous but historically uncertain: contemporary evidence for a criminal career is lacking. Her importance to historical fiction therefore lies partly in the contrast between the documented heiress and the much later legend built around her.