Anne Locke (Lock, Lok) (1530-after 1590) was an English poet, translator and Calvinist religious figure.
Contents |
She married first Henry Locke. In 1553 John Knox lived for a period in the Locke household, and in 1557 Anne took two of her children and followed Knox to Geneva, where she translated works of John Calvin. Henry joined them there, and the family, including the young Henry Lok who would be known as a poet, returned to England in 1560. Knox sent her reports from Scotland of his reforming endeavours, and she worked to find him support among London merchants. Henry died in 1571, and in 1572 she married Edward Dering, who died in 1576. Her third husband was Richard Prowse of Exeter. In 1590 she published a translation of a work of Jean Taffin.[1][2][3][4]
She published the first sonnet sequence in English, A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, as scholars now agree; it comprises 26 sonnets based on Psalm 51. It was added to a 1560 volume of sermon translations that she dedicated to the Duchess of Suffolk.[5] The sonnet craft shows the influences of both Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.[6]
Ann Locke's family background was a dense web of relationships involving the Mercers' Company, the court, Marian exiles and notable religious figures. Her father Stephen Vaughan was a merchant and diplomatic agent for Henry VIII. His second wife and Anne's stepmother Margery was the widow of Henry Brinklow, mercer and polemicist.[7] Through his connection to Thomas Cromwell, Stephen found a position for Anne's mother, also called Margery, as silkwoman to Ann Boleyn.[8]
Henry Locke was a mercer and one of many children of the mercer William Locke or Lok (who married four times);[9] William Locke was also connected to Cromwell. Her sister-in-law and one of Henry Locke's sisters was Rose Hickman (1526–1613), known as a Protestant autobiographical writer, married to Anthony Hickman.[10] Henry Locke's other sister Elizabeth married Richard Hill; both Rose and Elizabeth were Marian exiles. Elizabeth later married Nicholas Bullingham, after his first wife died (1566).[11] Michael Locke was a backer of Martin Frobisher, and married Jane, daughter of Joan Wilkinson, an evangelical associate of Ann Boleyn and her chaplain William Latymer.[12][13]