While her father roistered around the country, her mother spiralled into insanity until she entered a psychiatric hospital in Ghent during Catherine's early teens.

At this low point in her life, Sir Charles introduced a common-law wife, Anne Ayscough, into the family and ejected his daughter from the house.

[4] She worked for Mary of Modena, who had just married James, Duke of York, heir presumptive to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

"[5] James in fact was often attracted to women like Catherine and Arabella Churchill who were generally considered plain, if not ugly; his brother King Charles II once joked that his confessor must impose these mistresses on him as a penance.

[1] While James by his own account took Giffard's intervention "very kindly, he being a truly religious man" he told his councillors sharply "not to meddle in things that in no way related to them", adding, with a rare touch of humour, that he had not realised that they had all entered the priesthood too.