CARVAJAL, LUISA DE (1568-1614), Spanish mission ary in England, was born at Jaraicejo in Estremadura on Jan. 3, 1568. Moved by the execution of the Jesuit, Henry Walpole, in 1596, she decided to devote herself to the cause of the faith in England. With her share of the family fortune, she founded a college for English Jesuits at Louvain which was transferred to Watten near Saint Omer in 1612 and lasted till the suppression of the Order. In 1605, she arrived in England and established herself under the protection of the Spanish ambassador, whose house was in the Barbican. From there she carried on an active and successful propaganda. She made herself conspicuous by her attentions to the Gunpowder Plot prisoners, and won con verts, partly by persuasion, partly by assisting the poor. She was arrested in 1608. But the protection of the Spanish ambassador, and the desire of King James I. to stand well with Spain, secured her release. In 1613, while staying at a house in Spitalfields, where she had set up a disguised nunnery, she was arrested with all the inmates by the pursuivants of Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury. Her release was again secured by the new Spanish ambassador Gondomar. The Spanish authorities thinking her a political danger, recalled her, but before she could be forced to obey she died without her desired martyrdom on Jan. 2, 1614.
See L. Munoz La Vida y Virtudes de la Venerable Virgen Dona Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza (1632) . It is summarized by Southey in his Letters from Spain and Portugal (18o8) . See also Quatre Portraits de femmes, by La Comtesse R. de Courson (5895), and refs. in Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, by Henry Foley