Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/530

516 apostle St. John, to whose house she accordingly went, and spent with him the remainder of her days.

A Persian MS. says that the Virgin Mary was sixteen when she became pregnant, and one hundred and two when she died living sixty-six years after our Saviour's ascension. This would not agree with our method of counting, the Mahometans reckoning by lunar years; so that what with us is but one, is with them a year and a month. It goes on, saying that some authors make Mary live only six years after the ascension of our Saviour; and that at the time of her death she was fifty-two.

her infancy her mother committed her to the care of the lady Margaret, countess of Salisbury, daughter to George, duke of Clarence, brother to Edward IV, and mother to the famous cardinal Pole, with a view, as is supposed, to marry the princess to one of the said countess's sons, to strengthen her title, by that alliance to the house of York.

Queen Catherine was very careful of her education, and appointed several excellent tutors to perfect her in the Latin tongue. Under their tuition she became so great a proficient in the Latin tongue, that Erasmus commends her much for her epistles in that language, as wrote in a good style. Towards the latter end of her father's reign, at the earnest request of Catherine Parr, she undertook the translation of Erasmus's paraphrase on the gospel of St. John; which Mr. Udall, a very