Mary Arundell

Mary Arundell, Countess of Arundel (died 20 or 21 October 1557), was an English courtier. She was the only child of Sir John Arundell (1474 – 1545) of Lanherne, Cornwall, by his second wife, Katherine Grenville. She was a gentlewoman at court in the reign of King Henry VIII, serving two of Henry VIII's Queens, and the King's daughter, Princess Mary. She was traditionally believed to have been "the erudite Mary Arundell", the supposed translator of verses now known to have been the work of her stepdaughter, Mary FitzAlan, later the first wife of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk. Family Mary Arundell was the only child of Sir John Arundell (c.1474 – 8 February 1545) of Lanherne, Cornwall, and his second wife, Katherine Grenville (born 1489–93), a daughter of Sir Thomas Grenville (d. 1513). Mary Arundell's father, Sir John Arundell (d. 1545), was the son and heir of Sir Thomas Arundell (c. 1452–1485) (who after the defeat of King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth (1485) supported Henry Tudor's claim to the throne) by his wife Katherine Dynham, one of the four sisters and coheirs of John Dynham, 1st Baron Dynham (c.1433 – 1501). Sir John Arundell was made a Knight of the Bath when the future King Henry VIII was created Duke of York in 1494, and led troops against the Cornish rebels in 1497 and in France in 1513, where he was made a knight banneret at the siege of Therouanne. He was appointed a justice in Cornwall in 1509, served on numerous commissions in the West Country, and was appointed Receiver of the Duchy of Cornwall by 1508. In 1539, he was appointed to the Council of the West. Sir John Arundell's first marriage to Eleanor Grey (died c. 1503), the daughter of Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset, by his second wife, Cecily Bonville, linked him to a family close to the crown. Following his first wife's death, Sir John Arundell married, by papal dispensation dated 7 December 1503, Katherine Grenvile (born 1489x93), the youngest of the eight children of Sir Thomas Grenville of Stowe, Kilkhampton, Cornwall, by his first wife, Isabella Gilbert.