On This Day: Birth of Anne Hyde, Mother of Two Reigning Queens

Today marks the 380th anniversary of the birth of Anne Hyde, who was the mother of two reigning Queens of England.

Born at Cranbourne Lodge, Windsor in March 1637, Anne was the eldest child of Edward Hyde (later 1st Earl of Clarendon) and his second wife, Frances Aylesbury. She was named for her father’s first wife, who died shortly after their marriage in 1629. Edward Hyde was a politician and a member of the Privy Council under Charles I of England, and following Charles I’s execution in 1649, the Hydes fled to The Netherlands, where Mary, Princess of Orange (daughter of the deceased King) offered them a home.

Anne thus spent her teenage years as a lady-in-waiting in the Princess’s household, where she attracted the attention of several men who were in the Princess’s social set (though likely for her wit and gaiety than her beauty). One of those was James, Duke of York, Mary’s brother and the second son of Charles I. A few years after their first meeting, James and Anne became secretly engaged and began a sexual relationship (some historians believe the former was the only way James could achieve the latter).

The Hydes returned to England in 1660 when the English monarchy was restored and Charles II took the throne. By this stage, Anne was pregnant with her and James’s first child. Many (including Anne’s father) were so aghast at the thought of a royal Prince marrying a commoner, that – despite the pregnancy – they tried to convince James not to go through with his earlier promise to marry Anne. James even had slight doubts, swayed by his mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, and his sisters, but eventually held strong and gained the consent of his brother, Charles II, for the marriage to proceed, and the couple were married in a secret ceremony on the evening of September 3, 1660. The marriage was not officially announced until December.

Throughout her marriage (in which James was unfaithful with many women), Anne gave birth to eight children – Charles, Mary, James, Anne, Charles, Edgar, Henrietta and Catherine. Only Mary and Anne would survive past childhood, and both would eventually succeed to the English throne following their uncle and father, who had fled the country during the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and was deposed as King. Mary ruled alongside her husband, William of Orange, from 1689 to 1694; while Anne ruled from 1702 to 1714, and was the first ruler of the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Anne’s health began to decline following the birth of Edgar in 1667, and she died from breast cancer at the age of 34 on March 31, 1671, seven weeks after the birth of her last child. She refused to receive communion from an Anglican priest on her deathbed (she had converted to Roman Catholicism shortly after the Restoration and her return to England). She was interred in the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey.