Mabel Browne, Countess of Kildare

She was born into the English Roman Catholic Browne family whose members held prominent positions at the courts of the Tudor sovereigns for three generations.

Mabel was born in Sussex, England in about 1536, to Sir Anthony Browne, Knight of the Garter, Master of the Horse, and his first wife Alice Gage.

Her paternal grandparents were Sir Anthony Browne, Standard Bearer of England and Governor of Queenborough Castle, and Lucy Neville.

When Mabel was about seven years of age, in 1543, her father married Elizabeth FitzGerald, an Irish noblewoman celebrated as The Fair Geraldine in a sonnet by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.

The Brownes were Roman Catholics, but even after the Dissolution of the Monasteries Mabel's father enjoyed the favour of King Henry VIII when he was granted the estate of Battle Abbey in East Sussex.

According to historian Mary Anne Everett Green in her Royal and Illustrious Ladies, the pair actually met at a masked ball and Mabel immediately fell in love with him.