Ann, Lady Fanshawe

Ann (or Anne) Fanshawe (née Harrison) (25 March 1625 – 20 January 1680) was an English memoirist.

She was born on 25 March 1625 in the parish of St Olave Hart Street, London, to Sir John Harrison of Hertfordshire and Margaret Fanshawe, and had three brothers and a younger sister. Her childhood was spent in London and at Balls Park, Hertford. She liked not only French, needlework and music, but riding and running, and described herself with hindsight as "what we graver people call a hoyting girle." Her mother died in July 1640, and her father remarried, having a son and a daughter by his second wife.

Both her husband's and her own family were Royalists. In 1644 she married at Wolverton near Oxford her second cousin, Richard (later Sir Richard) Fanshawe (1608–1666), secretary of war to Prince Charles. They had 14 children, of whom four daughters and a son survived into adulthood.

They spent the latter years of the Civil War and the Interregnum travelling, for instance to Caen, Paris, The Hague, Ireland, Madrid, and Flanders, as well as London, Yorkshire, Huntingdonshire, Hertfordshire and Bath. Richard Fanshawe published translations and kept in touch with the royal family. The family joined Charles II in Flanders, Fanshawe was appointed Latin secretary and master of requests, and knighted at Breda. After the Restoration, he represented the University of Cambridge in Parliament, went to Portugal to help broker Charles II's marriage to Catherine of Braganza, and served as ambassador to Portugal (1662–63) and to Spain (1664–66). He died in 1666 in Madrid and his widow and her family returned to England. Ann petitioned the government for the payment of monies due to her husband, but with only partial success. She died in 1680, probably at Ware, Hertfordshire, where she was buried on 20 January 1680.

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