Notes for: Catherine Wycliffe

This family comes from An History of Richmondshire, in the North Riding of the County of York; together with those parts of the Everwicschire of Domesday which form The Wapentakes of Lonsdale, Ewecross, and Amunderness, in the Counties of York, Lancaster, and Westmoreland, by Thomas Dunham WHITAKER. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees (and others), 1823. 2 volumes. It says the first three generations "are not sufficiently proved." Here is the info given there on this family:

Catherine, baptized 29 June, 1762, at Kirkby Ravensworth, married, first, to Walter Sellon Gibson, of Leeds, by whom issue, married second to _____ Wade, by whom no issue.

In Notes and Queries, Series 5, v. 2 (1878), pp. 343-344, there is some information about Catherine titled "The Last of the Wycliffes." She was a Methodist from an early age and had known John Wesley personally. She preferred to read Wickliffe's translation of the Bible over the Authorized Version.

Her first husband got "a black fever" after visiting some poor people in Leeds and died a few months after the birth of his son. Catherine had several brothers, but all of them died young except for Thomas. He was a lawyer. Catherine died in her arm-chair. Here is the inscription on her tombstone in the churchyard at Whitkirk in Yorkshire County, England:


Sacred to the Memory of
Mrs. Catherine Wade,
of Halton,
the last descendant
of the family which in the 14th century
produced the Reformer,
Wickliffe.
She died in great peace, Jany. 29th, 1838.
Aged 75 years.
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the
death of his saints. Ps. cxvi, 15.

There is more about Catherine Wycliffe in the Wesleyan Magazine in 1838.

Marshall Plantagenet's The History of Yorkshire: Wapentake of Gilling West, in the genealogy of the Wycliffes at Gayles (p. 157), says this:

Catherine, baptized 29th June, 1762; living 182-. She married Walter Sellon Gibson of Leeds, co. York; 1st husband. She married _____ Wade, 2nd husband. No offspring.