Same Choice. Opposite Directions. Two Tudor Women in Exile.

In the 1550s, Tudor England created exiles going both ways. When Mary I came to the throne, Protestants fled. When Elizabeth came to the throne, Catholics fled. Today we're looking at two women caught on opposite sides of that chaos: Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, who endured poverty and Lithuania rather than pretend to be Catholic for one single day, and Jane Dormer, Mary I's closest friend, who left England in 1559 and never came back.

Both women refused to compromise. Both held onto who they were no matter what it cost them. But one always knew she was going home, and one quietly stopped thinking of England as home at all.

This is part of an ongoing series on Tudor women who did things their own way despite what authority was telling them.

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