Catherine Holland

Holland was born in 1637 and she would have four sisters and six brothers in a family lead by Lady Alathea Sandys (born Panton) and Sir John Holland. The family seat was Quidenham Hall in Norfolk. Her mother had been married before when she was married to William Sandys, fourth Baron Sandys. She was a Catholic Welsh heiress while her father was a protestant who had been knighted in 1629. He became a member of parliament in 1640 for Castle Rising in Norfolk.[1] Her father was asked by other members of parliament to get rid of any Catholic members at his home. He objected to this request and pointed out that people were entitled to follow the Catholic faith in England. However he sent his family abroad in 1641. She had been born in England but she grew up in Bergen op Zoom. Her father joined them abroad and he oversaw her Protestant education. She would copy sermons and she was required to learn catechisms and she would be published when she failed. She later wrote that she knew that Catholics believed that suicides were damned and it was for this reason that she endured her fathers discipline.[2]

Her education changed in 1652 when they moved to Bruges and her father went back to England. Holland was able to choose her own religion and she would attend secret Catholic masses. When she was nineteen she was shocked by the prison like life of the nuns at Nazareth. Her mother was allowed to be a Catholic but her father did not allow his children to make this choice so Holland hid her interests as she lived in England and Bruges for the next few years.[2]

There was a period when Holland nearly lost her religion as she took an interest in enjoying herself with friends in England.[2]

Mary Bedingfield was prioress at the English Augustinian convent in Bruges in 1661[3] and it was she who offered to assist Holland to leave England. She sent someone to accompany her from England to the convent.[2]

Holland professed as a nun on 3 September 1664 as a choir nun in Bruges at the English convent of Nazareth. Less than two weeks later she completed her auto-biography,"'How I came to change my religion" ,which she dedicated to her fellow nuns.[2] Holland's time at the convent was spent writing. She was said to have translated several books and lives of saints from French and Dutch into English.[4]

Holland died in Bruges in 1720. Over two hundred years later a fellow Nazareth nun, Catherine Sidney Durrant, published How I came to change my religion[2] within her book Link Between Flemish Mystics and English Martyrs.[5]