Mary Jean Stone

Born at Brighton, Sussex, in 1853; died at Battle, Sussex, 3 May, 1908. She was educated at a Calvinist school in Paris and at Aschaffenburg in Germany, where she acquired an intimate knowledge of French, German, and Italian. In Germany Miss Stone was brought into touch with the Catholic religion, and exchanged Protestantism for the "free atmosphere", as she expressed it, of the Catholic Church. She was received into the Church by Monsignor Ketteler, then Bishop of Mainz. Her historical studies, for which, perhaps, she is best known to the public, were, on her return to England, encouraged by the fathers of the Society of Jesus. Her talent and painstaking method of research earned for her a speedy recognition in her "Mary the First, Queen of England" (1901). This is a study of the unhappy queen which takes first rank amongst historical monographs. Miss Stone also wrote "Faithful unto Death", a study of the martyrs of the Order of St. Francis during the Reformation period (1892); "Eleanor Leslie", a memoir of a notable Scottish convert to the Church (1898); "Reformation and Renaissance", a group of studies on the periods indicated (1904); "Studies from Court and Cloister ", reprinted essays, of which perhaps the most interesting are those on "Margaret Tudor", "Sir Henry Bedingfeld", and a "Missing Page from the Idylls of the King" (1905); "The Church in English History", a higher textbook for teachers of history (1907). Her "Cardinal Pole", begun for the St. Nicholas Series, was interrupted by her death. She was a frequent contributor to the greater periodicals, the "Dublin Review", "Month", "Blackwood's", "Cornhill", etc., and contributed several articles to THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA.