Lady Catherine White (Weston)

https://books.google.com/books?id=16dbAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=...

Lady Catherine was born in 1607 (calculated backward from her Epitaph in Rome, 1645, which gives her age at death as 38). Exactly when she married, we do not know, but that she could have had Frances as her first child in 1622 - when she herself was barely fifteen - is stretching it a bit. It is somewhat more plausible that she married circa 1625 (at eighteen) and had George as her first child in 1628 (this is the consensus birthdate for George White). Frances may have been born circa 1632 - although that would mean she would not be getting married to anyone, anywhere, much before 1648.

The White family were Catholics and Royalists, and England was getting too cold for them in many more ways than just literally. There exists in the House of Commons records a pass allowing the White family - husband, wife and children all cited by name - to go to France in 1642.

From the House of Commons Journal, Volume 2 - 08 April 1642 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=14#sec-a15

White's Pass.

Ordered, That Rich. White, of Hutton in the County of Essex, with the Lady Catherine his Wife, and George, Jerome, Charles, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Francis [sic!] White, their Children, shall be licensed by this House to be transported into France, together with Three Men Servants, and Three Maid Servants (whose Names are also particularly to be inserted in the Warrant) and to transport their Trunks of Apparel, and other necessary Provisions: And the Searchers are required to take care that no prohibited Commodities be exported by them.

Lady Catherine Weston White died in Rome in late October, 1645. Sir Richard survived her at least long enough to have a moving epitaph composed and installed at the English College in Rome, and perhaps by another decade or two (his death date has sometimes been given as late as 1667).

Lady Catherine’s memorial tablet, and a translation

(The following is in poetic form, which Geni cannot properly render. Thus line endings have been indicated by "/".)

D.O.M./ Katharinæ Weston/ Comitis Portlandiæ Magni Angliæ/ Thesaurarii filiæ, singulari pietate,/ integritate, modestia præditæ,/ quae fidei Catholicæ causa Angliam/ deserens cum viro et familia, tandem/ Romam venit, ac post varias triennio/ placidissime tolleratas ærumnas, relictis/ octo liberis, ad meliorem vitam abiit,/ ii. Cal. Nov. anni mdcxlv, aetatis suae xxxiix/ Richardus White, ex Albiorum Essexien./ antiqua stripe, conjugi amantiss. posuit./

(relatively loose prose translation)

To God, the best and greatest, [in most loving memory] of Catherine Weston, treasured daughter of the Earl of Portland of Great Britain, singularly dutiful, endowed with great integrity and modesty, who because of her Catholic faith left England with her husband and family, and finally came to Rome, and after having endured various hardships most calmly for three years, having left eight children behind, went to a better life on the second kalends of November, in the year 1645, at the age of 38. Her devoted husband, Richard White, of an ancient family of Essex in Great Britain, placed this.

Note: “Second Kalends of November” translates in modern reckoning to October 31.