Anne Hyde

‘Monday 10 December 1660…So hearing that the Duke of York is gone down this morning, to see the ship sunk yesterday at Woolwich, he and I returned by his coach to the office, and after that to dinner. After dinner he came to me again and sat with me at my house, ands among other discourse he told me that it is expected that the Duke will marry the Lord Chancellor’s daughter at last which is likely to be the ruin of Mr. Davis and my Lord Barkley, who have carried themselves so high against the Chancellor; Sir Chas. Barkley swearing that he and others had lain with her often, which all believe to be a lie…’

Samuel Pepys refers to the Lord Chancellor’s daughter, in his diary entry for December 10, 1660.  The woman in question is Anne Hyde.  The Duke of York did marry her.  Walter Scott mentions Ms. Hyde in his biographical sketch, the”Life of Dryden”:

 ‘  The conversion of Dryden [to Catholicism] did not long remain unrewarded, nor was his pen suffered to be idle in the cause which he had adopted. On the 4th of March, 1685-6, an hundred pounds a-year, payable quarterly, was added to his pension; and probably he found himself more at ease under the regular and economical government of James, than when his support depended on the exhausted exchequer of Charles. Soon after the granting of this boon, he was employed to defend the reasons of conversion to the Catholic faith, alleged by Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, which, together with two papers on a similar subject, said to have been found in Charles the Second's strong box, James had with great rashness given to the public. Stillingfleet, now at the head of the champions of the Protestant faith, published some sharp remarks on these papers. Another hand, probably that of a Jesuit, was employed to vindicate against him the royal grounds of conversion; while to Dryden was committed the charge of defending those alleged by the Duchess. The tone of Dryden's apology was, to say the least, highly injudicious, and adapted to irritate the feelings of the clergy of the Established.’

James VII and Mary of Modena

On the 21^st of November, 1673, James Duke of York and Mary of Modena were married in an Anglican ceremony, upon Mary's arrival to England.  From the perspective of a legal marriage, the Anglican ceremony was irrelevant, as the couple had been wed as Catholics two months earlier.  The fifteen year old Mary held some strong opinions on certain topics, as shown in the anecdote Sir Walter Scott  presents in his “Tales of a Grandfather” (vol 50).

‘…The Duke of York, it is said, became aware of the punctilious character of the Scottish nation, from a speech of the well known Tom Dalziel. The Duke had invited this old cavalier to dine in private with him, and with his Duchess, Mary of Este, daughter of the Duke of Modena. This princess chose to consider it as a derogation from her rank to admit a subject to her table, and refused to sit down to dinner if Dalziel should remain as a visiter. " Madam," said the undismayed veteran, " I have dined at a table where your father might have stood at my back." He alluded to that of the Emperor of Germany, whom the Duke of Modena must, if summoned, have attended as an officer of the household. The spirit of the answer is said to have determined James, while holding intercourse with the Scottish nobles and gentry, to exercise as much affability as he could command or affect, which, with the gravity and dignity of his manners, gave him great influence among all that approached his person. He paid particular attention to the chiefs of Highland clans, made himself acquainted with their different interests and characters, and exerted himself to adjust and reconcile their feuds. By such means, he acquired among this primitive race, alike sensible to kind treatment, and resentful of injury or neglect, so great an ascendency, that it continued to be felt in the second generation of his family…’