Anne FitzPatrick

Anne FitzPatrick, Countess of Upper Ossory (née Liddell; 1737/8 – 1804) was an English noblewoman and the first wife of Augustus FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton. Grafton divorced her while serving as Prime Minister. She was a noted correspondent of Horace Walpole.

FitzPatrick was born in 1737 or 1738 in Derby to Ann and Henry Liddell who was the 4th baronet of Ravensworth.

FitzPatrick married the Duke of Grafton on 29 January 1756, and they had three children. Lady Georgiana FitzRoy was born in 1757 and George FitzRoy was born in 1760.

In 1761 she sent a silhouette that Jean Huber had created of her and her daughter to Horace Walpole. This letter was to be the start of a correspondence of 455 letters between herself and Walpole.

In 1764, the Duke had a very public affair with the courtesan Nancy Parsons who he kept her at his town house and took her to the opera. This brazen lack of convention offended society's standards. Her third child General Lord Charles FitzRoy was born in 1764.

After the Duchess had become pregnant by her lover, the Earl of Upper Ossory, she and the Duke were divorced by Act of Parliament, passed 23 March 1769. Three months later, on 24 June 1769, the Duke married Elizabeth Wrottesley (1 November 1745 – 25 May 1822), daughter of the Reverend Sir Richard Wrottesley, Dean of Worcester.

FitzPatrick died at her house in Grosvenor Square in 1804.

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