by Susan Flantzer
© Unofficial Royalty 2024

Despite fathering many illegitimate children with his mistresses, King Charles II of England had no children with his wife Catherine of Braganza. Charles II is an ancestor through his mistresses of many British aristocrats and of several women who married into the British Royal Family. Lucy Walter and Charles II are ancestors of Sarah, Duchess of York and Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester. Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland and Charles II are ancestors of Diana, Princess of Wales and Sarah, Duchess of York. Louise Renée de Penancoet de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth and Charles II are ancestors of Diana, Princess of Wales, Queen Camilla, and Sarah, Duchess of York.

Born on February 25, 1661, in Westminster, London, England, Anne was known by three names during her life: her name at birth, Lady Anne Palmer, her name after King Charles II of England recognized her, Lady Anne FitzRoy, and her married name Anne Lennard, Countess of Sussex. The surname FitzRoy comes from the Anglo-Norman Fitz, meaning “son of” and Roy, meaning “king”, implying the original bearer of the surname was a child of a king. Anne was the illegitimate daughter of King Charles II of England and one of his mistresses Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland in her own right. Anne’s paternal grandparents were King Charles I of England and Henrietta Maria of France (the daughter of King Henri IV of France and his second wife Marie de’ Medici). Her maternal grandparents were William Villiers, 2nd Viscount Grandison and Mary Bayning.

In 1642, the English Civil War broke out between King Charles I and the Parliamentarian and Puritan forces. When the situation deteriorated in the spring of 1646, the future King Charles II, then Prince of Wales, was sent out of England. The execution of King Charles I on January 30, 1649, made his son Charles the de jure King of England. Until the Stuart Restoration in 1660, when the Stuart monarchy in the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland was restored and King Charles II returned to England, he lived in exile in various places.

Anne’s mother Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland; Credit – Wikipedia

Anne’s mother was born in 1640 as Barbara Villiers, the only child of William Villiers, 2nd Viscount Grandison and Mary Bayning. In 1643, Barbara’s father died in the First English Civil War, leaving his 18-year-old widow and his three-year-old daughter in financial difficulty. Barbara’s mother soon married Charles Villiers, 2nd Earl of Anglesey, her late husband’s cousin. The marriage was childless and Barbara’s stepfather died from smallpox in 1661.

Barbara was considered one of the most beautiful of the young Royalist women but her lack of a dowry did not help her marriage prospects. In 1659, Barbara married the Roman Catholic Roger Palmer, later 1st Earl of Castlemaine, against his family’s wishes. At the end of 1659, Roger and his new wife left with other supporters of the exiled Charles, Prince of Wales (the future King Charles II) joining him in the Spanish Netherlands. In 1660, Barbara became King Charles II’s mistress. After years of exile during the Commonwealth, on May 1, 1660, Parliament formally invited Charles, as King Charles II, to be the English monarch in what has become known as the Restoration. On May 23, 1660, Charles landed in Dover, England, and on his 30th birthday, May 29, 1660, King Charles II entered London in a procession.

King Charles II of England; Credit – Wikipedia

On February 25, 1661, Barbara gave birth to Anne, her first child. Anne was probably the daughter of King Charles II, although some people believed she resembled Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield. a lover of Anne’s mother but he was in France when Anne was conceived. Barbara did not doubt that King Charles II was Anne’s father. As a reward for Barbara’s services, Charles II created Roger Palmer Earl of Castlemaine in 1661. Despite not being Anne’s father, Roger Palmer always held her in high affection and made her his trustee and the chief beneficiary in his will.

Besides Anne, Barbara gave birth to five other children and it is surmised that they were all the children of King Charles II. Through their children, Barbara Palmer and King Charles II are the ancestors of Diana, Princess of Wales and Sarah, Duchess of York, and their children Prince William, Prince Harry, Princess Beatrice, and Princess Eugenie.

The children of Barbara Palmer, probably the children of King Charles II, and therefore, probably the full siblings of Lady Anne FitzRoy (all have articles publishing soon):

• Charles Palmer, later FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Cleveland, 1st Duke of Southampton (1662–1730), married (1) Mary Wood, no children (2) Anne Pulteney, had six children
• Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton (1663–1690), married Isabella Bennet, 2nd Countess of Arlington, had one son
• Lady Charlotte FitzRoy (1664–1717), married Edward Lee, 1st Earl of Lichfield, had eighteen children
• George FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Northumberland (1665–1716), married (1) Catherine Wheatley, no children (2) Mary Dutton, no children
• Barbara FitzRoy (1672–1737), unmarried but had an illegitimate son; she became a nun taking the name Sister Benedicta; her mother claimed that she was Charles II’s daughter but she was may have been the child of her mother’s second cousin and lover John Churchill, later 1st Duke of Marlborough

In 1668, Anne’s mother sent her to be educated at the Visitation Convent in Chaillot, France, founded in 1651 by Anne’s paternal grandmother Queen Henrietta Maria who had returned to live in her native France. Anne was to be supervised by her grandmother but when Queen Henrietta Maria died the following year, Anne returned to England. Anne was again sent to France in 1671, to the Convent of English Benedictines in Pontoise, France where Lady Anne Neville was the Abbess. She returned to England after spending nearly two years at the convent.

Anne’s husband Thomas Dacre, 1st Earl of Sussex; Credit – Wikipedia

On August 11, 1674, at Hampton Court Palace, thirteen-year-old Anne was married to twenty-year-old Thomas Dacre, 15th Baron Dacre, a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Anne’s father King Charles II and the first cousin of Anne’s mother Barbara Palmer. Thomas was created Earl of Sussex upon his marriage to Anne.

Anne and Thomas had four children. Only their two daughters survived childhood. When Thomas died in 1715, his earldom became extinct because he had no sons but his daughter Anne succeeded to his baroncy.

• Barbara Lennard (1676 – 1741), married Charles Skelton, a Lieutenant-General in the French army, no children
• Charles Lennard (1682 – 1684), died in early childhood
• Henry Lennard (born and died circa 1683), died in infancy
• Anne Lennard, 16th Baroness Dacre in her own right (1684 – 1755), married (1) Richard Barrett-Lennard, died a few months after their marriage, had one son Thomas Barrett-Lennard, 17th Baron Dacre (2) Henry Roper, 8th Baron Teynham, had two sons and one daughter (3) The Honorable Robert Moore, had one son (4) Joseph Williams, had one son

Anne’s husband Thomas was considered a “popular but extravagant man” who lost money gambling. In 1688, after the Glorious Revolution forced Anne’s paternal uncle King James II of England to vacate the throne in favor of his daughter (and Anne’s first cousin) Queen Mary II and her husband and first cousin (also Anne’s first cousin) King William III, Anne and Thomas separated and it seems their marriage was dissolved. Anne and her two daughters joined the former King James II in exile at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye near Paris, France.

St. Peter and St. Paul New Church in Lyynsted, Swale Borough, Kent, England where Anne is buried in the churchyard; Credit – By pam fray, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13214529

Anne eventually returned to England where she died on May 16, 1721, at the age of 60, and was buried in the churchyard at St. Peter and St. Paul New Church in Lyynsted, Swale Borough, Kent, England. As for her former husband Thomas, due to his debts, he was forced to sell his 15th-century estate Herstmonceux Castle in Herstmonceux, East Sussex, England in 1708, and died in 1715.

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Works Cited

• Beauclerk-Dewar, Peter & Powell, Roger. (2006). Right Royal Bastards – The Fruits of Passion. Burke’s Peerage & Gentry LLC.
• Flantzer, Susan. (2020). Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland, Mistress of King Charles II of England. Unofficial Royalty. https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/barbara-palmer-1st-duchess-of-cleveland-mistress-of-king-charles-ii-of-england/
• Flantzer, Susan. (2016). King Charles II of England. Unofficial Royalty. https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/king-charles-ii-of-england/
• Fraser, Antonia. (2002). King Charles II. Phoenix.
• Weir, Alison. (2008). Britain’s Royal Families – The Complete Genealogy. Vintage Books.
• Wikimedia Foundation. (2024). Anne Lennard, Countess of Sussex. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Lennard,_Countess_of_Sussex
• Wikimedia Foundation. (2024). Thomas Lennard, 1st Earl of Sussex. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Lennard,_1st_Earl_of_Sussex