Anne of Gloucester

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Lady Anne of Gloucester (also Anne of Woodstock ; April 30, 1383 ; † October 16, 1438 ) was an English noblewoman and Countess of Stafford by marriage .

Life

Anne's parents were Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester , son of King Edward III. , and Eleanor de Bohun , King Edward I's great-great-granddaughter . She was baptized at Pleshey , Essex . Her uncle, John of Gaunt , ordered various payments in relation to this event.

Because of her ancestry and the wealth that she inherited, Anne was a sought-after marriage candidate even as a child. She was married three times. As a girl of about eight, she was married to Thomas Stafford, 3rd Earl of Stafford (around 1368; † 1392) in June 1391 in Pleshey Castle in Essex . The marriage was not consummated because of her childhood and her first husband died in 1392, so that no children resulted from this relationship.

In her second marriage, Anne married the brother of her late husband Edmund Stafford, 5th Earl of Stafford (* 1378, † 1403) around 1396 . There were three children from this marriage:

Anne's parents died in 1397 and 1399, respectively, and her only brother Humphrey, 2nd Earl of Buckingham , died as early as 1399 and that of her three younger sisters between 1399 and 1402. Anne became one of England's greatest heiresses. In 1399 she inherited the estates of the extinct Earldoms of Buckingham , Hereford and Northampton as well as the feudal lords of Brecknock and Holderness . However, she had to fight hard for possession of the goods left behind. For example, as her father's heir, she claimed an annual income of about a thousand pounds from the reigns of Oakham and Holderness, but King Henry IV was annoyed by the unequal division of the great inheritance of the Bohun family between his own wife Mary and Anne's mother in 1380 , so that he loaned Oakland and Holderness to other nobles. Under pressure from Henry V , Anne finally had to consent to a new division of the estate, which greatly favored the king. Oakland did not come into their possession until 1414 and Holderness only in 1437.

Anne was very pious and had a long, close friendship with John Wyche († 1436), the prior of Llanthony Priory in what is now Monmouthshire in south-east Wales . She exchanged letters with this clergyman in English and French. After her second husband died at the Battle of Shrewsbury on July 21, 1403 , she received an annual net income of over £ 1,500 from the Stafford inheritance. King Henry IV was very interested in her remarriage, as her widow lands in the Welsh March were strategically important. But very soon after the beginning of her second widowhood, she secretly married William Bourchier (* around 1374; † 1420), from 1419 Count of Eu, in third marriage in October 1403 . As a result, the couple had to pay the king large fines, but were soon forgiven.

Anne had at least five children with her third husband, who on various occasions stayed abroad for long periods:

Anne died on October 16, 1438 at the age of 55. In her will, written shortly before her death, she had touchingly remembered some of her loyal servants. According to her last will, she was buried at the side of her third husband in Llanthony Priory.

Her family had married into three older Plantagenet lineages and one of the richest families in England. Anne and her husbands had also created an extremely powerful family with their marriage policy for the next generations. The most famous of their descendants was their great-grandson Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham , who before and during the reign of Richard III. played an important but dubious role.

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Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c d e Carole Rawcliffe, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB). Vol. 2, p. 227 f.
personal data
SURNAME Gloucester, Anne of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES From Gloucester, Anne; Woodstock, Anne of
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English nobleman and by marriage Countess of Stafford
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1383
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1438