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Rose Lok (26 December 1526 – 21 November 1613) was an English businesswoman and Marian exiles during the Tudor period. At the age of eighty-four, she wrote an account covering the first part of her life.
According to Sutton, Rose Lok's mother was Alice Spenser, the first of Sir William Lok's four wives, who was an early convert to Protestantism. However, according to McDermott, Alice Spenser died in 1522, and Rose Lok's mother was Sir William Lok's second wife, Katherine Cooke (d.1537), daughter of Sir Thomas Cooke of Wiltshire.
Her brothers included Michael Lok, a merchant who investedin the Martin Frobisher expeditions, Henry Lok, father of the poet Henry Lok and John Lok, the sea captain. Among her sisters were Elizabeth Lok (1535–), who married firstly a London mercer, Richard Hill, and secondly Nicholas Bullingham, Bishop of Lincoln; and Jane Lok. Her father, Sir William Lok, was the great-great-great-grandfather of the philosopher John Locke (1632–1704).
In 1610, when she was eighty-four years of age, Rose Lok wrote an account of the first part of her life. In it she told of her parents' activities in furtherance of their Protestant beliefs, including her father's pulling down in 1534 of a copy of the Papal bull excommunicating Henry VIII which had been posted in Dunkirk, of his bringing French translations of the Gospels and Epistles from the continent for Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, and of her mother's having read aloud evangelical tracts to Rose and her sisters in secret when they were children.
Rose's mother later died in childbirth. In 1543 Rose married Anthony Hickman, a mercer and merchant adventurer who was in partnership with Rose's eldest brother, Thomas Lok. Hickman and Thomas Lok owned several ships, including the Mary RoseNot the naval vessel Mary Rose which was built in 1510 and sank in the Solent on 19 July 1545. which was named after their respective wives.
Accounts of some of their voyages were included by Richard Hakluyt in his Principal Navigations. Rose and her husband were on terms of friendship with prominent Protestant clergymen, including Bishop John Hooper, the martyrologist John Foxe, and the Scottish Protestant leader, John Knox, who mentioned Rose and her husband in several of his letters written between 1556 and 1561 to Anne Locke, Rose's sister-in-law.
When the Catholic Mary I came to the throne in 1553, Anthony Hickman and Thomas Lok were committed to the Fleet prison for having aided imprisoned Protestants and for having maintained religious heresy. They were later released to house arrest under the supervision of William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester, and eventually freed. Rose's husband then crossed to Antwerp, while Rose went to friends in Oxfordshire, where she gave birth and had her child baptized as a Catholic after having discussed the matter earlier with Bishops Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, and Ridley.
After having given birth Rose joined her husband in Antwerp, and while there gave birth to another child whom she had secretly baptized by a Protestant minister. After the death of Queen Mary in November 1558 Rose returned to England, but since her account ends at this point little is known of the remainder of her life apart from the fact that she died on 21 November 1613, aged eighty-six. An epitaph survives from 1637. According to Lowe, although her life was one of devoted Protestantism, "she was also very caught up with business and material concerns, and with the impact of religious changes on her standard of living".
Rose Lok's account of her early life is now held by the British Library as Add MS 43827. Autobiographical reminiscences written down c.1610 of Rose Throckmorton (d.1613), daughter of Sir William Lok, Add MS 43827, British Library Retrieved 17 November 2013.
She married secondly Simon Throckmorton (1526?–1585) of Brampton, Huntingdonshire,Sutton gives the surname of Rose Lok's second husband as Throckmorton, but does not identify him as Simon Throckmorton. the third son of Richard Throckmorton of Higham Ferrers by Joan Beaufo, daughter of Humphrey Beaufo of Whilton, Northamptonshire. He was a nephew of Sir George Throckmorton of Coughton Court, and served as a Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1554 and again in 1559. Throckmorton, Simon (by 1526–85), of Brampton, Huntingdonshire, History of Parliament Retrieved 17 November 201.
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