This text was copied from Wikipedia on 24 April 2017 at 3:22PM.
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.
On 10 July 1634 she became the second wife of Edward Hyde, 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:
- Lady Anne (1637–1671), married King James II/VII.
- Hon. Henry, later 2nd Earl of Clarendon (1638–1709)
- Hon. Laurence, later 1st Earl of Rochester (1641–1711)
- Hon. Edward (died young)
- Hon. James (died young)
- Lady Frances, married Thomas Keightley, Irish revenue commissioner and privy councillor.
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."
She is portrayed in a sympathetic light in The Piccadilly Plot, the seventh of the Thomas Chaloner mystery novels by Susanna Gregory.
Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.