Lady Ruth Norrington Reilly (1922-2005)

More's Mulberry will one day be posting a review of In the Shadow of a Saint, a 1983 book about St. Thomas More's wife, Alice Middleton More, by Lady Ruth Norrington Reilly.

The book is a "natural" for a post on this blog because the author's prologue to the book begins as follows:

"As I sit in the shade of the old brick wall of my aunt's garden in Chelsea, one of the few boundary walls of More's Chelsea estate still standing, the sharp tone of [Alice's] voice, tinged with love and humour, seems to drive over it.  The chatter and laughter of the family group sitting round the ancient mulberry tree on the other side ring down four hundred and fifty years." (p. 2.)

For information regarding the mulberry tree, see the posts Thomas More and the Mulberry Tree:  Genus Morus Part I and Part II.

Given the immediacy of her connection to the real More's mulberry tree, it seems appropriate to introduce the book's English author, Lady Ruth Norrington Reilly (1922-2005) before posting the review of her book.

Lady Norrington was born Ruth Margaret Cude on May 17, 1922.  She was the youngest daughter of Edmund Cude of Ashbrittle, Church Vale, London N2 and his wife Alice Marian Haswell.

Over the course of her adult life, Lady Norrington was married and widowed four times.  In 1947, she married Frank Davies (Permanent Secretary of Enugu, Nigeria) (d. 1959) to whom she bore a daughter.  In 1963, she married Peter Rupert Waterlow (d. 1969).  In 1969, she married Sir Arthur Lionel Pugh Norrington (President of Trinity College, Oxford) (d. 1982); and lastly Sir D'Arcy Patrick Reilly (ambassador to the USSR and France) (d. 1999).

Aside from the book on Alice Middleton More, Lady Norrington also authored a 28-page board book entitled The Household of Sir Thomas More:  A Portrait by Hans Holbein (Kylin Press, 1985).

In addition, Lady Norrington wrote In the Shadow of the Throne: The Lady Arabella Stuart and My Dearest Minette (the correspondence between Charles II and his sister).

According to the dust jacket of the Alice Middleton More book, Lady Norrington had a devotion to St. Thomas More since childhood.  She studied for the Bar, wrote for the BBC, published numerous articles on Lady Alice More and did a Vatican Radio broadcast regarding Lady Alice's royal connections.

Lady Norrington was a convert to Catholicism.  In a 1993 article in the Tablet, she talked about her conversations with the late Fr. Arthur McCormack, whom she encountered when he was a missionary priest in Africa where she was living with her first husband, Frank Davies.  She wrote, "I was not a Catholic at this time, but [Fr. McCormack] knew that all my thoughts were turning that way.  [W]e sat hour after hour . . . and sometimes far into the night . . . talking about the Catholic Church and the faith that was the core of his life. . . . [H]e opened his heart to me about it, and took me on the way to my reception into the Church three years later."

Lady Norrington passed away on 1 October 2005.  At that time, she was living at Lansdown Crescent in Bath.  Her funeral service was held on October 13, 2005, at St. Mary's (Roman Catholic) Church on Julian Road in Bath.

Sources:

The Peerage

The Tablet

Bristol Post