Thus wrote Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, in a letter to ‘the right honorable learned and vertuous Ladie A.B.’. The ‘Ladie A.B.’ in question is Lady Anne Bacon (1528–1610) and the letter was appended to her translation of John Jewel’s Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, published in 1564. The translation deserves closer attention than it has so far received. At first sight, Parker’s dedicatory epistle portrays the translation as a semi-private manuscript work by a woman, which only accidentally found its way into print. Closer analysis reveals that whilst this translation was produced by a woman within a domestic setting, Anne Bacon had always envisaged a wider readership and was addressing concerns far beyond her own household in the work. This was a translation designed to remedy the dearth of preaching in the 1560s, providing a creed for the nascent Church of England. Anne deliberately wanted her message to appeal to as wide a readership as possible and so she turned to contemporary theories of translation to produce an authentically ‘English’ voice in her text. Female religious translations have often been considered as evidence of the silencing of women’s voices in print culture. This essay will instead argue that detailed analysis of Anne Bacon’s translation of the Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae reveals her ability to speak clearly on behalf of her own religious priorities.

An Apologie or answere in defence of the Churche of Englande was not the first published translation by Anne Cooke Bacon; between 1548 and 1551, her translations from Italian into English of nineteen sermons by the Italian reformer, Bernardino Ochino, were published in three different volumes. Knowledge of the classical and modern languages necessary for these acts of translation derived from the humanist education Anne and her sisters received from their father, Sir Anthony Cooke.