Anne Hyde (1637-71) had two daughters who would become
Queens and would have been a Queen Consort herself had she not died before her
husband became King.
She was the eldest daughter of Edward Hyde, first Earl of
Clarendon, who was a prominent royalist during the reign of King Charles I and
an active player in the restoration of King Charles II in 1660.
She originally attracted the attention of James, Duke of
York, in 1656 when she was a maid of honour to Mary of Orange (the eldest
daughter of King Charles I and the mother of the future King William III). James
was Mary’s younger brother and next in line to the throne after his elder
brother Charles. It was in honour of James that the Dutch colony of New
Amsterdam was renamed New York when it was acquired by the English government
in 1664.
James and Anne became more closely acquainted in 1659,
although James wanted to end the relationship after Charles was restored to the
throne in May 1660. Charles ordered James to marry Anne, who was heavily
pregnant, and the wedding took place in September, with Anne’s first child
being born in October. Had Anne not been pregnant, it is unlikely that they
would have married at all, given that James was now heir presumptive and, as
such, would not have been expected to marry a commoner.
Anne took to her new role with dignity and not a little
pride, even winning over her mother-in-law Henrietta Maria. As a wife, she was
clearly the dominant party and, according to Samuel Pepys, “the Duke of York,
in all things but in his amours, is led by the nose by his wife”. He also
observed that “the Duchess is not only the proudest woman in the world, but the
most expenseful”.
James, like his brother Charles, had dalliances with a
number of mistresses, Anne’s response being to have an affair with Henry Sydney,
a courtier who would later find a niche in history as the man most responsible
for inviting James’s nephew William to succeed him as King when James was
exiled in 1688.
Anne was a high-Church Anglican who gradually turned to
Catholicism as her preferred religion. It was her influence that led her
husband to follow the same course, one which would eventually lead to his
unpopularity and being forced to yield the throne after a reign of only three
years (1685-88).
However, Anne did not live to see this happen, dying from
breast cancer in 1671 at the age of 34. During her marriage she gave birth to eight
children, but only two of them lived into adulthood. These were Mary, who
married William III and reigned jointly with him as Queen Mary II, and Anne who
succeeded her as Queen when William died in 1702.
© John Welford
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