Sovereign Ladies: Sex, Sacrifice, and Power--The Six Reigning Queens of England by Maureen Waller

Author:Maureen Waller [Waller, Maureen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Great Britain, General, Biography & Autobiography, Royalty
ISBN: 9781466858022
Google: WWg0AQAAQBAJ
Publisher: St.Martin's
Published: 2013-11-26T20:52:51+00:00

ANNE

b. 1665, r. 1702–1714

23

Lady Anne

ANNE STUART WAS born on 6 February 1665, the year of the plague. Her mother’s labour was so fast that it is doubtful if King Charles II and his Queen and many of those who usually crowded into the lying-in chamber at a royal birth arrived at St James’s on time. As she was the fourth child and second daughter of the King’s brother, James, Duke of York, and his wife Anne, she was not considered likely to come to the throne. Besides, she was a weak little thing and looked likely to follow her elder brother to the grave.

On the birth of a second daughter to the Duchess of York, Charles II wrote to his sister the Duchess of Orléans in France, showing how undervalued a princess was:

I am very glad to hear that your indisposition of health is turned into a great belly. I hope you will have better luck with it than the Duchess here had, who was brought to bed Monday last of a girl. One part I shall wish you to have, which is that you may have an easy labour, for she despatched her business in little more than an hour. I am afraid your shape is not so advantageously made for that convenience as hers is; however, a boy will recompense two grunts more.

Lady Anne, as the younger daughter of the heir apparent was known throughout her childhood, was named in honour of her mother, Anne Hyde, the commoner who had lured a royal duke into marriage. Her christening took place in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace a few days later. Her godparents included her three-year-old sister, Mary, who was held up at the font by her governess. Edward Hyde, the Lord Chancellor, created Earl of Clarendon in the wake of his daughter’s marriage, seemed particularly pleased with this new granddaughter, perhaps because she resembled the Hydes and had such a placid temperament. But she was delicate and would need to survive the perils of infancy, the attentions of the royal physicians, and the plague which raged in London and then in the provinces through the first two years of her life.

The Duke and Duchess spent the summer of 1665 in York with their three children, Mary, James, Duke of Cambridge, and Anne, and in the autumn the family took up residence in the Oxford colleges with the rest of the court, avoiding the plague-ridden capital. When the court returned to London in the spring of 1666, the York children were sent to the healthier environment of Richmond Palace further up the Thames. A new baby, Charles, Duke of Kendal, soon joined them. Here they had their own ‘family’ or household. The world Lady Anne was most familiar with consisted of her siblings, her wet nurse Mrs Martha Farthing, her governess Lady Frances Villiers, the under-governess Mrs Mary Kilbert, and other servants including nurses, rockers, a dresser, a seamstress, a necessary woman, a laundress and a page of the backstairs.

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