The Marrying of Anne Hyde: Scandal, Deceit, and the Stuart Restoration

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Anne Hyde (1637-71) was never queen of England, but was (in memoriam) mother of two Protestant queens – Mary II and Anne. Born in 1637, Anne Hyde was the daughter of a commoner - Edward Hyde (later Earl of Clarendon) - and met her future husband, James, duke of York (second son of Charles I), when they were both living in exile in the Netherlands. She married him in 1660 and two months later gave birth to their first child, who had obviously been conceived out of wedlock. Scandal and outrage surrounded the young couple and this lecture concentrates on the formative period of their relationship, exposing the strains of living at a court in exile and the stresses of recreating an English monarchy in the early, ill-prepared, years of the Stuart Restoration.

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