The Wicked Lady

By John Barber

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Barber
• Release date: Feb 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311710413

John Barber

John Barber was born in London at the height of the UK Post War baby boom. The Education Act of 1944 saw great changes in the way the nation was taught; the main one being that all children stayed at school until the age of 15 (later increased to 16). For the first time working class children were able to reach higher levels of academic study and the opportunity to gain further educational qualifications at University.This explosion in education brought forth a new aspirational middle class; others remained true to their working class roots. The author belongs somewhere between the two. Many of the author’s main characters have their genesis in this educational revolution. Their dialogue though idiosyncratic can normally be understood but like all working class speech it is liberally sprinkled with strange boyhood phrases and a passing nod to cockney rhyming slang.John Barber’s novels are set in fictional English towns where sexual intrigue and political in-fighting is rife beneath a pleasant, small town veneer of respectability.They fall within the cozy, traditional British detective sections of mystery fiction.He has been writing professionally since 1996 when he began to contribute articles to magazines on social and local history. His first published book in 2002 was a non-fiction work entitled The Camden Town Murder which investigated a famous murder mystery of 1907 and names the killer. This is still available in softback and as an ebook, although not available from SmashwordsJohn Barber had careers in Advertising, International Banking and the Wine Industry before becoming Town Centre Manager in his home town of Hertford. He is now retired and lives with his wife and two cats on an island in the middle of Hertford and spends his time between local community projects and writing further novels.

Book preview

The Wicked Lady

The life and legend of Katherine Ferrers

By John Barber

Copyright 2014 John Barber

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Chapter One – The legend of the Wicked Lady

(I have used the name spelled as Katherine throughout. The alternative version of Catherine also appears in many histories. The Fanshawe family themselves when writing to me in 2003 preferred Katherine. The portrait above as used for the cover of this book also has this version)

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,

A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;

They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,

His pistol butts a-twinkle,

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

From The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

A 3-cornered hat, a black mask, black riding cloak, scarf and breeches; and riding a black horse with white flashes on its forelegs.

Traditional description

I was a highwayman.

Along the coach roads I did ride

With sword and pistol by my side

Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade

Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade

The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five

But I am still