Lady Mary Killigrew (née Mary Wolverston; c.1525–after 1582) was the daughter of a Suffolk privateer and wife of Sir John Killigrew IV, Vice Admiral of Cornwall and governor of Pendennis Castle, whose ancient seat of Arwenack House stood on the neck of land that would later become Falmouth. The Killigrew family had an unusually frank relationship with piracy: they sheltered ships in Penryn harbour, traded in stolen cargoes, and were suspected of worse. Mary was in her late fifties when she committed her most notorious act.
The story
In January 1582, a Spanish vessel, the Marie of San Sebastian, was anchored at Penryn under a letter of safe conduct from Queen Elizabeth I. Having heard that it carried a rich cargo, Lady Killigrew directed her servants to row out at night, board the ship, overpower the crew, and strip its hold. Her men were later caught, tried, and condemned to death. Mary herself was arrested, tried, and sentenced to execution — a remarkable fate for a woman of her rank, wife of the royal governor of Pendennis Castle. Through the intercession of powerful connections the sentence was commuted and Elizabeth issued a pardon, but not before Lady Killigrew had spent a period imprisoned.
The incident left a lasting mark on Cornish coastal folklore. Mary appears in nineteenth-century Cornish antiquarian literature as a byword for high-born audacity, and her legend was kept alive in oral traditions associated with the Killigrew seat. Stories of a lantern hung in a tower window to lure ships onto the rocks of the Fal estuary cluster around the family; various women of the Killigrew line were accused of similar crimes across several generations, suggesting that ‘Lady Killigrew, the pirate’ became a composite figure in popular tradition.