Anne Stafford, Countess of Huntingdon

Lady Anne Stafford
Anne Stafford, c. 1535, by Ambrosius Benson
Spouse(s)	Sir Walter Herbert George Hastings, 1st Earl of Huntingdon
Issue Francis Hastings, 2nd Earl of Huntingdon Sir Thomas Hastings Edward Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings of Loughborough Henry Hastings William Hastings Dorothy Hastings Mary Hastings Katherine Hastings
Noble family	Stafford (by birth) Huntingdon (by marriage)
Father	Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham
Mother	Lady Katherine Woodville
Born	c.1483
Died	1544 Buried at Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire

Anne Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon (née Lady Anne Stafford) (c. 1483–1544) was the daughter of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and Lady Katherine Woodville. She was the wife of Sir Walter Herbert, and George Hastings, 1st Earl of Huntingdon, and served in the household of King Henry VIII's daughter, Princess Mary, the future Queen Mary I.

Family

Lady Anne Stafford, born around 1483, the year her father was executed for treason by order of King Richard III, was the daughter of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and Katherine Woodville, sister to Elizabeth Woodville, queen consort of King Edward IV.^[1]

By her father's marriage to Katherine Woodville, Anne Stafford had two brothers, Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham,^[2] and Henry Stafford, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and a sister, Elizabeth, who married Robert Radcliffe, 1st Earl of Sussex.^[3]

After the execution of the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, his widow, Katherine Woodville, married Jasper Tudor, uncle of King Henry VII. Katherine Woodville died on 18 May 1497. Her mother cared for Anne until her marriage in 1503.

When Anne's first husband, Sir Walter Herbert, died in 1507, Anne, then only 20 years of age, turned over control of her jointure, which included Raglan Castle in Wales, to her brother, Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham. Anne resided in her brother's household at Thornbury until her second marriage to George Hastings in 1509.^[4]

In 1510, shortly after her second marriage, Anne was the subject of scandal when her brother, Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, after hearing rumours concerning Anne and Sir William Compton, found Compton in Anne's room. Compton was forced to take the sacrament to prove that he and Anne had not committed adultery, and Anne's husband, the Earl of Huntingdon, sent Anne away to a convent 60 miles distant from the court. There is no extant evidence establishing that Anne and Sir William Compton were guilty of adultery. However in 1523 Compton took the unusual step of bequeathing land to Anne in his will, and directing his executors to include her in the prayers for his kin for which he had made provision in his will.^[5]

Despite this scandal, Anne and her second husband, the Earl of Huntingdon, appear to have enjoyed a close and loving relationship, as evidenced by a letter written to Anne by the Earl in 1525 which has been described as 'one of the most affectionate and charming letters of the period'.^[6]

Marriages and issue

Anne Stafford married firstly, in 1503, Sir Walter Herbert (d. 16 September 1507),^[7] an illegitimate^[8] son of William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke.^[9] The marriage was childless.

She married secondly, in December 1509, George Hastings, 1st Earl of Huntingdon. They had five sons and three daughters:^[10]

• Francis Hastings, 2nd Earl of Huntingdon, who married Katherine Pole (d. 23 September 1576), elder daughter of Henry Pole, 1st Baron Montagu, and by her had six sons, including Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, and George Hastings, 4th Earl of Huntingdon, and five daughters, including Frances, wife of Henry Compton, 1st Baron Compton.^[11]
• Sir Thomas Hastings, who married, before October 1553, Winifred Pole (d. 22 February 1602), daughter of Henry Pole, 1st Baron Montagu, and Jane Neville, daughter of George Neville, 4th Baron Bergavenny. There were no issue of the marriage. After Sir Thomas Hastings' death, Winifred Pole married Sir Thomas Barrington (d.1581).^[12]
• Edward Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings of Loughborough.
• Henry Hastings.
• William Hastings.
• Lady Dorothy Hastings, who married Sir Richard Devereux (d.1548), second son of Walter Devereux, 1st Viscount Hereford, and Mary Grey, the daughter of Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset. The eldest son of Walter Devereux, 1st Viscount Hereford, predeceased him, as did his second son, Sir Richard Devereux (d.1548). However Sir Richard Devereux and Dorothy Hastings had a son, Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, who was his grandfather's heir.^[13]
• Lady Mary Hastings, who married Thomas Berkeley, 6th Baron Berkeley.^[14]
• Lady Katherine Hastings.

Ancestry

Fictional portrayals

Anne is the protagonist of At the King's Pleasure by Kate Emerson.^[15] In two 2007 episodes of the Showtime television series, The Tudors, Anne Stafford, portrayed by Anna Brewster, is presented as the 3rd Duke of Buckingham's daughter (she was his sister), and is involved not with Henry VIII but with a fictionalized version of the King's future brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. She is also shown as dying of the same sweating sickness that killed Compton.

Anne is also a character in the Philippa Gregory novel, The Constant Princess.

Notes

References

• Cokayne, George Edward (1959). The Complete Peerage edited by Geoffrey H. White. XII (Part II). London: St Catherine Press. 
• Davies, C.S.L. (2008). "Stafford, Edward, third duke of Buckingham (1478–1521)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/26202.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Davies, C.S.L. (2004). "Stafford, Henry, second duke of Buckingham (1455–1483)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/26204.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Dockray, Keith (2004). "Stafford, Henry, earl of Wiltshire (c.1479–1523)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/70804.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Harris, Barbara J. (2002). English Aristocratic Women, 1450-1550. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
• Howell, A. Lloyd (2004). "Devereux, Walter, first Viscount Hereford (c.1489–1558)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/7567.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• McGurk, J.J.N. (2004). "Devereux, Walter, first earl of Essex (1539–1576)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/7568.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
•  Pollard, Albert Frederick (1898). "Edward Stafford (1478-1521)". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography 53. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 446–7. 
• Richardson, Douglas (2011). Everingham, Kimball G., ed. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families II (2nd ed.). Salt Lake City. ISBN 1449966381. 
• Richardson, Douglas (2011). Everingham, Kimball G., ed. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families III (2nd ed.). Salt Lake City. ISBN 144996639X. 
• Richardson, Douglas (2011). Everingham, Kimball G., ed. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families IV (2nd ed.). Salt Lake City. ISBN 1460992709. 
• Maclean, Sir John (1883). The Berkeley Manuscripts, ed. Sir John Maclean II. Gloucester.