Gertrude Aston Thimelby

Gertrude Aston Thimelby (1617–1668) was an English poet and author, who became a Roman Catholic nun late in life.

Life

One of the 10 children of Sir Walter Aston of Tixall and Colton (Staffordshire), later Baron of Forfor, a British diplomat, and his wife, Gertrude (née Sadlier), Gertrude Aston wrote poetry as a member of a Catholic literary circle, now known as the "Astons of Tixall". In 1620 her father went to Spain on an embassy, taking his wife and children with him. Sir Walter stayed in Spain for six years, where he converted to Roman Catholicism.

In 1645 she married Henry Thimelby from a large recusant family, whose sister Katherine was also a poet,[1] was the wife of Gertrude's brother, Herbert. In 1658, after the deaths of her husband and only child, Gertrude became a nun at St. Monica's Convent, Louvain, where her sister-in-law, Winefrid Thimelby, a notable letter-writer, was the Prioress.[2] Sister Gertrude died in 1668. The Aston and Thimelby families and their literary circle exchanged and collected manuscript poems and letters, known today through the volumes edited by their descendants.

References
  1. Stevenson, Jane; Davidson, Peter; Davidson, Regius Chalmers Professor of English Peter (2001). Early Modern Women Poets (1520–1700): An Anthology. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-924257-3.
  2. "Thimelby [née Aston], Gertrude (1617–1668), poet". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/71156. Retrieved 30 January 2021. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
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