Anne Fairfax (1617-1665) was an English noblewoman and the wife of Thomas Fairfax, commander-in-chief of the New Model Army during the English Civil War.
Biography[]
Anne Vere was born in the Netherlands in 1617, the daughter of Horace Vere, 1st Baron Vere of Tilbury, who was in command of an English expedition to support the Protestant Dutch rebels against Catholic Spain. In 1637, she married Thomas Fairfax, commander-in-chief of the New Model Army during the English Civil War, during which Anne's family supported the Royalists, and Anne accompanied her husband on campaign. Her husband refused to attend the trial of King Charles I of England in January 1649, but Anne attended the trial until she was ejected for heckling the court; when the court claimed that they were acting on behalf of "all the good people of England", the royalist Anne shouted, "No, nor the hundredth part of them!" Her daughter Mary went on to marry the royalist George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham on his return to England in 1657, and she and her husband negotiated their son-in-law's bail from the Tower of London in 1659. She died at Nun Appleton Hall in North Yorkshire in 1665, followed by her husband six years later.