Anne Lennard, Countess of Sussex

Anne Lennard
Countess of Sussex

Lady Anne at about age four by Sir Peter Lely.
Born 25 February 1661
Westminster, England
Died 16 May 1721 or 1722 (aged 60 or 61)
England
Nationality English
Occupation Courtier
Spouse(s) Thomas Lennard, 1st Earl of Sussex
Children Barbara Skelton
Anne Barrett-Lennard, 16th Baroness Dacre
Parent(s) Charles II of England (disputed)
Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland

Anne Lennard (née Palmer), Countess of Sussex (25 February 1661 – 16 May 1721 or 1722) was the eldest daughter of Barbara Palmer, mistress to King Charles II of England. She became the wife of Thomas Lennard, 1st Earl of Sussex, 15th Baron Dacre.

Born Lady Anne Palmer in Westminster, England,[1] she was the first child of Barbara Palmer, who was married to Roger Palmer, 1st Earl of Castlemaine, and who was also a mistress of Charles II. According to legend, Anne was conceived on the night of Charles's Coronation. Both Palmer and the king acknowledged Anne as his daughter and she was known by the alias Fitzroy, meaning "son of the king," but she is generally assigned to the 2nd Earl of Chesterfield, "whom," says Lord Dartmouth, "she resembled very much both in face and person."[2]

Marriage

On 11 August 1674, at the age of thirteen, Lady Anne was married at Hampton Court to the 15th Baron Dacre, a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the King. On the same day her ten-year-old sister Lady Charlotte Fitzroy was contracted to Sir Edward Lee (raised from an early baronetcy to the Earldom of Lichfield two months before, and also a Gentleman of the King's Bedchamber). Both the wedding and her dowry were paid for by Charles II. Dacre was subsequently created Earl of Sussex.

At some point Anne had an almost certainly lesbian relationship with Hortense Mancini, a mistress of her father, Charles II, and therefore a rival of her mother, his maîtresse en titre. To put an end to the affair, Anne's husband, Lord Sussex, removed his wife to the country. In the summer of 1678, Lady Sussex was abducted from a convent in Paris and seduced by Ralph Montagu (afterwards 1st Duke of Montagu). She was 17 years old. He was successively the lover of mother and daughter (the Duchess of Cleveland and Lady Sussex).[3] In a letter to King Charles, dated "Paris, Tuesday the 28th, 1678," her mother wrote:

I was never so surprised in my whole life-time as I was at my coming hither, to find my Lady Sussex gone from my house and monastery where I left her, and this letter from her, which I here send you the copy of. I never in my whole life-time heard of such government of herself as she has had since I went into England. She has never been in the monastery two days together, but every day gone out with the Ambassador (Ralph Montagu), and has often lain four days together at my house, and sent for her meat to the Ambassador; he being always with her till five o'clock in the morning, they two shut up together alone, and would not let my maitre d'hôtel wait, nor any of my servants, only the Ambassador's. This has made so great a noise at Paris, that she is now the whole discourse. I am so much afflicted that I can hardly write this for crying, to see a child, that I doted on as I did on her, should make me so ill a return, and join with the worst of men to ruin me.[4]

Anne's husband the Earl of Sussex was a "popular but extravagant man"[5] who, by extravagance and losses by gambling, had to sell the estate of Herstmonceaux and others. Lord and Lady Sussex separated in 1688, and she was widowed in 1715. The dowager countess of Sussex died 16 May 1721 or 1722, and was buried at Linsted, County Kent.

Issue

The children of her union with Sussex were two sons, who died in infancy; and two daughters, who lived to adulthood, co-heirs of the Barony Dacre:[6]

  1. Barbara Lennard (12 July 1676, Westminster, London – 1741, Paris), married Charles Skelton, Esq., Lieutenant-General in the French service, and Grand Croix de St. Louis. Died without issue.
  2. Charles Lennard, Lord Dacre (25 May 1682, Windsor Castle – 13 March 1684)
  3. Henry Lennard: born about 1683 at Herstmonceaux, Sussex; died in infancy.
  4. Anne Lennard (17 August 1684, Sussex – 26 June 1755, London), 16th Baroness Dacre in her own right. Married thrice;[7]
(1) First, to Richard Barrett-Lennard, Esq. (died 1716), son of Dacre Barrett-Lennard and his wife Jane, eldest daughter of Arthur Chichester, the second Earl of Donegal. Died a few months after his marriage to the Lady Anne in 1716, leaving his wife with child. Their son was Thomas Barrett-Lennard, 17th Baron Dacre (1717 – 12 January 1786), who died without legitimate issue.
(2) Secondly, to Henry Roper, 8th Baron Teynham (died 16 May 1723). Had, among other children, Charles, who m. Gertrude, sister and co-heir of John Trevor, esq. of Glynde, in Sussex, and left at his decease, in 1754,
Charles Trevor-Roper, 18th Baron Dacre (1745-1794). Died without issue, and the title devolved upon his nephew.
Gertrude (d. 3 October 1819), who succeeded her brother, as Baroness Dacre. The Hon. Gertrude Roper m. Thomas Brand, esq. of the Hoo, in the county of Herts; by whom she had issue,
Thomas, 20th Baron Dacre
Gertrude.
Henry, C.B., major-general in the army, who distinguished himself during the war in Spain.
(3) Thirdly, to Roger Moore, Esq., fifth son of Henry, Earl of Drogheda, in Ireland, by whom she had one son, Henry.

Her descendants include:

References

  1. ↑ June Ferguson's Royalty GED
  2. ↑ From Burnet's History of his Own Times, quoted in G. Steinman Steinman's A Memoir of Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, 1871, page 26.
  3. ↑ Cunningham and Goodwin's The Story of Nell Gwyn, 1903, page 196.
  4. ↑ "Memoirs of the Court of England"
  5. ↑ From John Heneage Jesse's Memoirs of the Court of England During the Reign of the Stuarts, 1855, page 170.
  6. ↑
  7. ↑ From Booker, von Alvensleben, W Owen's The Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1790, pages 372-374.