Anne Stanley, Countess of Castlehaven

Anne Stanley, Countess of Castlehaven (May 1580 – c. October 1647) was the eldest daughter and heir of Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby and Alice Spencer. According to the will of Henry VIII and the Third Succession Act, she was heir presumptive to the English throne upon the death of Elizabeth I.

Her paternal grandparents were Henry Stanley, 4th Earl of Derby and Lady Margaret Clifford. Margaret was a daughter of Henry Clifford, 2nd Earl of Cumberland and Lady Eleanor Brandon. Eleanor was herself the youngest daughter of Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk and Mary Tudor, Queen of France.

According to the Will of Queen Elizabeth's father, King Henry VIII, the descendants of his older sister, Margaret Tudor, being foreigners, were excluded from the succession to the throne, and after his own three children the throne was to pass to the descendants of Henry's younger sister, Mary Tudor, Queen of France. This left Anne Stanley as first in line after her grandmother's death in 1596.

Senior to Anne Stanley's claim had been that of Mary Tudor's other granddaughters, Lady Jane Grey, Lady Catherine Grey, and Lady Mary Grey. Lady Jane Grey, England's nine-day Queen after the death of Edward VI, was executed before she could have children; her third sister, Lady Mary Grey, also died without issue; however, her second sister, Lady Catherine Grey, secretly married Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, and Elizabeth declared this marriage invalid, which made Catherine's two sons illegitimate, although the validity of the marriage was later confirmed by King James I. Following the death of Lady Mary Grey in 1578, Anne Stanley's grandmother, Margaret Stanley, Countess of Derby, assumed the senior position among the descendants of Mary Tudor as heir to the English crown on the death of her cousin Queen Elizabeth. Margaret died in 1596, and as her son Ferdinando had predeceased her, Anne inherited her claims.

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