Anne Windsor, a woman who is new to me, in my own studies of Tudor history that is. Anne Windsor who then became Anne Dudley when she married Edmund Dudley. So we’re going to talk briefly about her today. There’s not a lot known about her life, but she was here, and she mattered, and I wanted to talk about her.
I am working on an upcoming podcast episode about the infamous Empson and Dudley, Henry VII’s advisers who were so unpopular that one of the first moves that Henry VII made as King was to execute them. And of course in my reading, I come across Edmund Dudley’s wife, Anne Windsor.
Now see, this was a little confusing to me because I always think of the Windsors as the current Windsors and and I know the story of how they took on their name because their old name sounded too Germanic. So I didn’t realize that there was like this whole crew of Windsors in the past and in fact, Anne Windsor does not even have her own Wikipedia page. Â Â
When you Google her, all that comes up is the current Princess Anne. So I had to do quite a bit of digging to find out about this woman’s life, and I first was reading about her, there’s a book called The House of Dudley that came out recently, which is what I’m using to write this podcast episode. The person who wrote that, talked about Anne and that’s where I first read about her and I did a bit of digging on her and her family and where you get most of your information is through genealogy pages.
Interestingly enough, she was only about 21 when she died as well, so there’s not a lot of information. She didn’t live enough of a life to be in the records many times. But she was married to one of the king’s leading ministers and she comes from a family that actually managed to survive through the Wars of the Roses which is no small feat.
So she was born about 1479. Her father Thomas was the Constable of Windsor Castle. Thomas made a will in 1479 from which we get information about the family, and then in 1483 he was told to prepare for some knighthood honors that would be handed down during Edward’s I coronation. Of course, that’s when young Edward I was preparing to be crowned.
And so Thomas Windsor was told to prepare for becoming a knight. He was going to be knighted at the honors that were given out during the coronation. But of course that never happened because Richard III. Richard III did name him Constable of Windsor Castle which seems to have been a hereditary job that his ancestors also had.
Then in 1485 of course, Henry VII beats Richard III. It’s August 22nd as I’m recording this, which of course is the Battle of Bosworth. So when Henry beat Richard he stripped Thomas of all of his lands and honors but that was common because it was like the old King gave it to you but then he immediately restored them, so that was nice.
But unfortunately, Thomas died just a week after. So he never got to enjoy his new honors. His son Andrew who was Anne’s brother inherited, we actually know a fair amount about Andrew Windsor because he was a knight. He went on to go to France with Henry VII in 1513. He was Keeper of the Wardrobe which was a huge responsibility under Henry VII.
And he managed to live until the ripe old age of about 75 which is no small feat for people who are in power around Henry VIII. Seems like people in power with the exception of Charles Brandon don’t live really long lives. Anyway he wasn’t in enough power I guess.
Back to Anne, she would have been about six when her father died, her mother remarried a Sir Robert Lytton who was himself Keeper of the Wardrobe under Henry VII which of course is a position that puts you very close to the king. Anne was the youngest daughter, the last one to marry.
And in his will, her father left her about 66 pounds that was 100 marks for her dowry. It wasn’t huge, but it was the equivalent to the salary of a skilled rradesman for like three or four years. So it was a decent dowry, especially for the youngest daughter.
But she did have a family that was growing in prominence and growing in their close relationship to the king so that would have been attractive more so than her dowry, especially for a family who maybe had money but didn’t have that influence and for Edmund Dudley that was good enough.
Edmund Dudley was actually close friends with Andrew who was Anne’s brother and the two had worked together throughout the 1490’s to secure lands under the new Tudor Monarch for both the Dudley clan and the Windsor clan in Sussex.
So the Windsor children were marrying into important families in Sussex and Edmund himself had siblings that were making important marriages. So this little clique was building a powerbase and Anne Windsor found herself married to Edmund Dudley.
Edmund and Anne married in 1494. She was about 15 years old. Her father-in-law John Dudley not the later John Dudley, but an earlier John Dudley, her father-in-law, he loved his daughter-in-law Anne and in his will he left her gold which he said she could use to make a chain in any style that she wanted.
Then that chain would go to his granddaughter, her daughter, whom he called little his Little Elizabeth. Anne’s daughter Elizabeth was born around 1500 and she herself went on to live until about 1560. Sadly one of the most famous things that she is famous for is for having an unhappy marriage.
Her husband William Stourton had an affair with Agnes Rice whowas the daughter of Rhys ap Gruffydd and the granddaughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk. It created a hugescandal when William who was the husbandof Elizabeth Windsor William had anaffair with this Agnes Rice.
He actually brought Agnes to live in his house, kicked his wife out, and at his death hegave most of his land and his property to Agnes which resulted in years of litigation in contesting the will because Elizabeth’s son their heir Charles, their legitimate heir would have been Anne Windsor’s grandson.
They had quarreled bitterly. Charles had called his father a hypocrite, belonged in prison, so it turned into a big mess contesting this land and it cost a lot of money on both sides. William and Agnes had one daughter who was illegitimate also called Agnes. So sadly that is what Anne Windsor’s daughter Elizabeth is most known for.
So Anne married Edmund in 1494. It’s interesting that they didn’t have any children for 6 years. It’s possible that at the time, Edmund was building up his career. Maybe they weren’t living together. I can’t find any records of what was happening during that time. So if you know of any, please leave a comment. I would love to know.
But they did have little Elizabeth in 1500 and Anne died shortly thereafter. The thing is, I’m not sure how she died, if she died in childbirth. I think that she probably didn’t die directly in childbirth because there’s that record of her father-in-law John calling her daughter his little Elizabeth.
John had died and in his will he left the gold chain to Anne implying that she was still alive at the time that he died. So he had enough time to meet Elizabeth and call her his little Elizabeth and then leave the gold to Anne in his will.
So I think she probably hadn’t died directly in childbirth, but at the same time, after Edmund Dudley remarried, there’s records of his second wife at the time, saying that she was worried she would go the way of Edmund’s first wife when she was pregnant.
Maybe Anne had something happen like what happened with Jane Seymour where she was well and then things took a turn. Or maybe she just got sick and her body was still quite weak recovering from childbirth, it can take a while and maybe she wasn’t fully healed yet and that’s how she died.
But either way, she died in 1500 and had a pretty grand funeral that all the local gentry, all the important people showed up in a church, where her father-in-law had donated alter cloth for his funeral when he had died as well.
So there you go. That’s Anne Windsor. She died at about 21, not a lot to say about her but she’s one of these people who was skirting around on the outside of power yet she would have seen a lot. She would have seen her father surviving the Wars of the Roses, being stripped of honors and then regiven the honors, and then her stepfather being quite close to the new king, it was an interesting life that she lived for the short amount of time that that she lived it.
A little bit about Anne Windsor, a person that I did not know existed but I feel like my life is a little bit fuller now that I do know of her existence.
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast,  one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.