The Wicked Lady

Katherine Ferrers is known as the Wicked Lady, a female highwayman who terrorised the local countryside in the middle of the seventeenth century. One night she was mortally wounded but managed to ride back to her home, Markyate Cell, where she died. Her servants took her body to be buried at St Marys Church, Ware but her ghost can still be seen riding a black horse over the countryside where she once committed her crimes.

This is the legend that has entered the folklore books of Hertfordshire, fascinated lovers of ghost stories and was made into a blockbusting film in the 1950’s.

This book recounts the legend and the life of Katherine Ferrers. She was sole heir to her family fortune when her father and grandfather died and was married at the age of fourteen to Thomas Fanshawe who was himself just sixteen. Thomas Fanshawe then sold all of Katherine’s property to help pay off family debts and fund the Royalist cause during the English Civil War.

Katherine died and was buried in June 1660. This book places the legend side by side with the facts that are known about Katherine; and the reader can decide where the truth lies.