Frances Hyde (Countess of Clarendon)

Summary

Mother of Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, and daughter of Anne Aylesbury.

Wikipedia

This text was copied from Wikipedia on 16 November 2024 at 5:10AM.

Frances Hyde, Countess of Clarendon (25 August 1617 (baptised) – 8 August 1667), born Frances Aylesbury, was an English peeress. As the mother of Anne Hyde, she was mother-in-law to James II and VII, the deposed king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the maternal grandmother of Mary II and Queen Anne.

Biography

Frances Aylesbury was the daughter and eventually sole heiress of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, 1st Baronet, and his wife, Anne Denman. The translator William Aylesbury was her brother.

On 10 July 1634 she became the second wife of Edward Hyde,[1] who was later created Baron Hyde (in 1660) and Earl of Clarendon (in 1661). He was Lord Chancellor of England 1658–1667. They had six children:

Character

Her husband in his memoirs wrote of his wife in somewhat guarded terms, but their surviving letters suggest that it was a close and affectionate marriage, strong enough to survive a four-year separation during the English Civil War. His unusually intimate friendship with Anne Villiers, Countess of Morton (a cousin of his first wife, Anne Ayliffe), never seems to have posed a threat to the happiness of his second marriage, and in any case, this friendship ended in a bitter quarrel some time before Lady Morton's death in 1654.

Frances's death after a short illness was undoubtedly a great blow to her husband, at a time when he was fighting desperately to stave off the threat of impeachment. In his will of 1666, he refers to Frances as "my dearly beloved wife who hath accompanied and assisted me in all my distress with greater resignation and courage and in all respects deserved much more from me than I can repay to her".

Another tribute to her character came from the diplomat Henry Coventry, who was then engaged in the peace negotiations at Breda, and wrote that the news of Frances's serious illness made him "very unfit for the business". On hearing of her death, he wrote to Clarendon, "I do from the bottom of my heart condole with you."

Burial

Frances died at the age of 49 and was buried in the Hyde Vault in Westminster Abbey. The register of 1661 records: "Frances, daughter and sole heiress of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, Bart., by Anne his wife, and second wife of Sir Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon." Her husband survived another 13 years before being buried with her. Her mother Anne Denman is also buried in the Hyde vault.

In fiction

She appears as a character in The Piccadilly Plot, the seventh of the Thomas Chaloner mystery novels by Susanna Gregory.

She is mentioned in The King's Evil by Andrew Taylor, published by Harper Collins in 2019.

References

  1. ^ "Edward Hyde & family". Westminster Abbey. Retrieved 21 March 2018.

3 Annotations

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San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Francis Aylesbury Hyde, Countess of Clarendon (1617 - 1667)

Chancellor Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon’s wife, Francis, doesn't mean much to Pepys. He doesn't even mention her passing on August 8, 1667.

She was born Frances Aylesbury, the second child of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, 1st Baronet and Anne Denman.
At 16 she became the second wife of Sir Edward Hyde at St. Andrew's Church, Westminster. The couple had six children including the future 2nd Earl of Clarendon and the future 1st Earl of Rochester.

With the death of her elder brother in 1657, Francis became her father's sole heir.
She was styled as Baroness Hyde of Hindon in November 1660 and styled as Countess of Clarendon in April 1661.
She died at 49 and was interred at Westminster Abbey.

Wikipedia says, ‘Her husband in his memoirs wrote of his wife in somewhat guarded terms, but their surviving letters suggest that it was a close and affectionate marriage, strong enough to survive a four-year separation during the English Civil War. His unusually intimate friendship with Anne Villiers, Countess of Morton (a cousin of his first wife, Anne Ayliffe), never seems to have posed a threat to the happiness of his second marriage, and in any case this friendship ended in a bitter quarrel some time before Lady Morton's death in 1654.

‘Frances' death after a short illness was undoubtedly a great blow to her husband, at a time when he was fighting desperately to stave off the threat of impeachment. In his will of 1666, he refers to Frances as "my dearly beloved wife who hath accompanied and assisted me in all my distress with greater resignation and courage and in all respects deserved much more from me than I can repay to her."

‘Another tribute to her character came from the diplomat Henry Coventry, who was then engaged in the peace negotiations at Breda, and wrote that the news of Frances' serious illness made him "very unfit for the business". On hearing of her death he wrote to Clarendon, "I do from the bottom of my heart condole with you."’

It was bad timing for everyone. Her daughter, Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, had just lost two sons. And her husband was facing a Parliamentary insurrection and the loss of favor from Charles II.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
https://www.findagrave.com/memori… -- with a picture.

JSTOR has an article, "The Women in Clarendon's Life and Works" noting that Chancellor Hyde was a typical 17th century gentleman, holding a low opinion of women in general. This may answer the question of his not giving her much credit for her contributions to his career and success in his Memoirs. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4146…

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References

Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.

1661

1667