Anne Dowriche of Anne du Bourg, a counselor in the Parliament of Paris who opposed using capital punishment for crimes of heresy. The third major event of the poem is a retelling of the bloody St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, an attack against Huguenots which began in Paris in 1572 and spread throughout France. Dowriche imagines the queen of France, the devoutly Catholic Catherine de Medici, fiercely proposing the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. While St. Bartholomew’s Massacre was a real series of events, Dowriche invented the detail that Catherine de Medici proposed the killings. Though Catherine de Medici is a villainous character
Anne Hungerford Anne Hungerford Anne Hungerford (née Dormer; 1525–1603) was an English lady of the royal court during the reign of Queen Mary I, and poet. Anne was a daughter of Sir William Dormer by his first wife, Mary, daughter of Sir William Sidney and Anne (née Pakenham). She was the sister of Jane Dormer, a lady in waiting to Queen Mary I, and later wife of the Duke of Feria. Both Anne and Jane were prominent recusants. In 1558 Queen Mary gave permission for Sir Walter Hungerford, who had earlier been married to the Queen's Maid of Honour, Anne Basset, to