Anne of Denmark
1574 – 1619 · Generation XXV
Anne of Denmark (1574–1619). Married James I & VI Stuart in 1589. 3 of their children are recorded in this archive. A daughter of Frederick II of Denmark and Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow, she was fourteen when married by proxy at Kronborg in 1589. Storms drove her fleet back to Norway, and James sailed out to fetch her himself, marrying her in person at Oslo that November. In Scotland she fought him bitterly for custody of their son Henry, whom James had placed with the Earl of Mar at Stirling; the quarrel preceded a miscarriage in 1595, and the couple slowly drifted into separate lives. England, from 1603, gave her a wider stage. She commissioned Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones for lavish court masques — sometimes dancing in them herself — patronised John Dowland and the painters who set Jacobean taste, and had Jones design the Queen’s House at Greenwich. Ill health dogged her after 1612, and she died at Hampton Court in 1619 with her son Charles at her bedside.
Place in the family
- Anne of Denmark was a 6× great-grandmother of Queen Victoria.
- The archive records 106 of her descendants, across 15 generations.
Partners
- Married King James I (1566 – 1625) in 1589 — 3 children together
Children
- Henry Frederick Stuart (1594 – 1612)
- Elizabeth Stuart (1596 – 1662)
- King Charles I (1600 – 1649)
Life
- 1574 — Born
- 1589 — Married James I & VI Stuart
- 1619 — Died