Anne of York (daughter of Edward IV)

Soon after the death of her father and the usurpation of the throne by her uncle Richard III, Anne, who was about eight years old, was declared illegitimate among the other children of Edward IV by Elizabeth Woodville.

The princess's mother, fearing for the children's lives, moved them to Westminster Abbey, where the late king's family received asylum and spent about a year.

Anne was born on 2 November 1475 at the Palace of Westminster as the fifth daughter[1] and seventh of ten children of King Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville.

Philip's mother, Mary of Burgundy, was the heiress of vast lands and had influence on European affairs;[10] besides, her stepmother was Edward IV's sister Margaret of York, widow of Duke Charles the Bold.

The following year, the agreement took on a more formal form: as a financial security for the princess, she was allocated an amount of 100,000 crowns; Archduke Maximilian agreed to pay Anne 6,000 crowns per year from the moment she reaches the age of 12 years—the age of marriage consent, and from the moment she arrived at the court of the future father-in-law and the engagement was ratified, Anne was to receive land in Artois worth 8,000 livres for her use.

[11] The court records of 1479 report that at the time when negotiations were underway for the marriage of Anne and Philip of Austria, the princess's nurse, "Agnes, wife of Thomas Butler", was dismissed with the appointment of a pension.

[9] Earlier, at the same time as Anne, Agnes Butler was engaged in raising the princess's younger brother George,[12] who died in March 1479 at the age of about two years.

[14] Edward V was moved to the Tower of London to await his coronation, where he was later joined by his only brother, Richard; along with the rest of the children, including Anne, the dowager queen took refuge in Westminster Abbey.

Tudor historian Edward Hall wrote that Richard III "made all the daughters of his brother solemnly arrive at his palace; as if with new familiar and loving entertainment they were supposed to forget...the trauma inflicted on them and the tyranny that preceded this".

[30] Since Cecily, the former betrothed of James, was already engaged to the king's uncle John Welles, and Catherine was to become the wife of the prince's younger brother, it was necessary to choose between Anne and the youngest of her sisters, Bridget.

[31] In 1488, on St George's Day, Anne, among twenty other ladies, was present in the retinue of her sister the queen; she was dressed in a robe of scarlet velvet and sat on a snow-white palfrey, whose saddle was draped in a golden cloth embroidered with white roses, the symbol of the House of York.

The next time the princess is mentioned in the sources in connection with the death of her mother in June 1492: Anne sat at the bedside of the dying woman in Bermondsey Abbey, where the dowager queen spent the last five years of her life.

Anne led the mourners at her mother's funeral instead of Queen Elizabeth, who was expecting the birth of her fourth child and therefore delegated her powers and responsibilities to her younger sister.

Anne and her younger sisters, Catherine and Bridget, departed with the Queen's body by river to Windsor Castle, where on 13 June Elizabeth Woodville was buried next to her second husband Edward IV in St George's Chapel.

According to the herald's notes, "the standard-bearers walked ahead of milady Anne, who was present at the memorial mass instead of the queen; she prayed on her knees on the carpet and pillow.

The queen turned her attention to representatives of the English nobility and, first of all, to Thomas Howard, the son and heir of the 1st Earl of Surrey,[31] to whom Richard III had already planned to marry Anne.

In the Wars of the Roses, the Howard family sided with Richard III, which is why under Henry VII, in 1485 the Earl of Surrey was imprisoned in the Tower for three and a half years, deprived of his rights, titles and possessions.

In addition, in 1502, the queen added 10 marks (6 pounds 13 shillings 4 pences) to her sister's annual pocket expenses, as well as £120 to Thomas Howard, which he had to spend on his wife's food.

Mary Anne Everett Green writes that the records of the Howard house indicate four children, of which only one child, a son named Thomas, lived long enough to be christened.

On 23 March 1510, her nephew King Henry VIII granted his aunt and her spouse a property with a garden in Stephenheath; on 22 November[40] the king (in compensation for the lands claimed in right of her great-grandmother Anne de Mortimer, wife of Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge) gave Anne and her possible heirs extensive possessions, including the Castle and Manor of Wingfield and many other properties[42] in Norfolk, Suffolk, York, Lincoln and Oxford.

[43] Thomas Howard moved Anne's remains to the Church of St Michael the Archangel, Framlingham[2][10] and ordered a rich tombstone, with the expectation that after death he would rest there, which happened in 1554.