Henrietta Hyde, Countess of Rochester
English countess
Henrietta Hyde, Countess of Rochester (née Boyle; 1646 – 12 April 1687) was an Anglo-Irish noblewoman. She was one of the Windsor Beauties painted by Sir Peter Lely.
Life
She was born in Wiltshire, England, to Sir Richard Boyle, 2nd Earl of Cork, and Elizabeth Boyle, Countess of Cork.
In 1665, she married Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester, son of Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon and Frances Aylesbury. Henrietta had four children.
In November 1677, she was appointed to succeed Frances Villiers as the governess of the children of the Duke of York.
Like most of the Boyle dynasty, who in the space of two generations had become almost all-powerful in the south of Ireland, Henrietta was strong-minded and acquisitive, and could be ruthless in asserting her rights.
During the last two years of her life, when her husband was Chief Minister to his brother-in-law King James II, Henrietta took full advantage of his power to claim every possible privilege. She clashed bitterly with her husband's niece, the future Queen Anne, over who should have the best apartments in Whitehall Palace. Anne, who could herself be a formidable opponent, complained bitterly of her aunt's "peevishness" to her.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henrietta Hyde, Countess of Rochester” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.