Rose Lok (26 December 1526 – 21 November 1613) was an English businesswoman and Protestant exile during the Tudor period. At the age of eighty-four, she wrote an account covering the first part of her life.
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Family
Rose Lok, born in London on 26 December 1526, was one of the nineteen children of Sir William Lok (1480–1550), gentleman usher to Henry VIII and mercer (cloth merchant), sheriff and alderman of London. Rose and five of her brothers and six of her sisters survived to adulthood, all children of her father's first two marriages.
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 Frobisher expeditions, Henry Lok, father of the poet Henry Lok and John Lok, the sea captain. Among her sisters were Elizabeth Lok (1535–c. 1581), 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).




