Isabella Launder

Isabella Launder, recorded in contemporary sources as Isabel or Lawnder, was the last prioress of the small Benedictine community known as Black Ladies at Brewood in Staffordshire. She was probably from the Beech area near Stone and was the daughter of Ralph Launder. A visitation records her as prioress by 1521, presiding over a very small female religious house with limited resources.

Black Ladies was suppressed in October 1538 during Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries. Launder surrendered the house and received both a payment and a pension; later evidence suggests that she lived with relatives. The priory’s lands passed into lay hands, making her career a local example of the profound effect of Henrician religious policy on women’s religious communities.

Isabella Launder is one of the two historical figures at the centre of Jeri Westerson’s Roses in the Tempest, which imagines her relationship with Thomas Giffard and her experience as the last prioress of Black Ladies while the monasteries are dissolved.