Katherine Palmer (died 15 December 1576) was abbess of Syon Abbey during its peregrination in the Netherlands. She was responsible for preserving the only English religious community to continue unbroken through the Reformation.

Life

Katherine was the younger daughter of Edward and Alice Palmer of Angmering, Sussex, and sister of John, Henry, and Thomas Palmer. In 1539 she was at Syon when it was suppressed in 1539, and she was granted an annual pension of £6. In 1551, she and nine other members of her order travelled to Termonde, where she supervised an English convent on the grounds of Klooster Maria Troon.^[1]

During a short-lived return to England between 1566 and 1569, Palmer and twenty-four others were re-established at Syon Abbey. Palmer was elected abbess on 31 July 1557 as the choice of Mary I. On the accession of Elizabeth I, the community was re-dissolved, and Palmer led them back to Maria Troon.^[2]

On 8 May 1564, Palmer had Pope Pius IV recognise the continuity of her community with the abbey established in 1415.^[1] This meant that Syon Abbey continued to exist as the same establishment through its subsequent peregrinations.^[3] It did not return to England until 1861 and finally closed in 2011.^[4][5]

Palmer led the community between several locations in Zurich, Antwerp, and Mechelen in the face of Calvinist pressure, including a break-in by Calvinists a month before her death in 1576.^[1]

References