Anne de Mortimer

Anne de Mortimer (27 December 1388 – c. 22 September 1411) was a medieval English noblewoman who became an ancestor to the royal House of York, one of the parties in the fifteenth-century dynastic Wars of the Roses.

Anne was the mother of Richard, Duke of York, and thus grandmother of kings Edward IV and Richard III, and great-grandmother of Edward V. Born 27 December 1388,[1][2][3] Anne de Mortimer was the eldest of the four children of Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March (1374–1398), and Eleanor Holland (1370–1405).

Upon Roger Mortimer's death in 1398, this claim passed to his son and heir, Anne's brother Edmund, Earl of March.

[4] Following their mother's death in 1405, the sisters fared less well than their brothers and were described as "destitute", needing £100 per annum for themselves and their servants.

The marriage was undertaken secretly and probably with haste, without the knowledge of her nearest relatives, and was validated on 23 May 1408 by papal dispensation.