Anne was the daughter of a member of the English gentry—Edward Hyde (later created Earl of Clarendon)—and met her future husband when they were both living in exile in the Netherlands.

[7] Mary appointed Anne a maid of honour, apparently against the wishes of her mother Henrietta Maria, who loathed Hyde.

[11] On 24 November 1659, two[12] or three[13] years after she first met him, James promised he would marry Anne, despite the opposition of many, including her father, who confined her to a room and allegedly urged Charles to execute her.

The wedding took place between 11 at night and 2 in the morning at Worcester House—her father's house in the Strand—and was solemnised by Dr. Joseph Crowther, James's chaplain.

"[18] Even in the minds of James's nephew (later to become Anne's son-in-law), William III of Orange, and that of her husband's cousin, Sophia of Hanover, the stigma of the Hydes' lowly birth remained.

Berwick had a highly successful career in the French army, while James secured a series of positions for Arabella's brother, John Churchill.

[25] [26] Historian John Callow claims Anne "made the greatest single impact" in the process that led to James becoming a Catholic.

[28] Although he later converted to Catholicism on his deathbed, Charles insisted for political reasons that his brother's children must be raised as Protestants, so both Mary and Anne were members of the Church of England.

[5][b] On her deathbed, her brothers Henry and Laurence tried to bring an Anglican priest to give her communion, but Anne refused[33] and she received viaticum of the Catholic Church.

[34] Two days after her death, her embalmed body was interred in the vault of Mary, Queen of Scots, at Westminster Abbey's Henry VII Chapel.

[36] After Anne Hyde's death, a portrait of her painted by Willem Wissing was commissioned by the future Mary II; this used to hang above the door of the Queen's Drawing Room of the Garden House at Windsor Castle.

The throne was then offered by the Parliament of England to Anne's eldest daughter Mary and her husband William III of Orange.