Background
She was a daughter of Sir Robert Howard, a younger son of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Berkshire, in whose home Mary"s early youth was spent.
She was a daughter of Sir Robert Howard, a younger son of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Berkshire, in whose home Mary"s early youth was spent.
At the age of eighteen, to escape the attentions of Charles II of England, she went to Paris, under the assumed name of Talbot, and was placed in the Benedictine convent of Val de Grace to learn French. Here she was made successively mistress of the choir, second and first portress, the latter a position involving the management of the temporal affairs of the convent, and in 1702, on the resignation of Mother Winefrid Clare Giffard, abbess since 1670, she became abbess of the community.