Anne FitzPatrick, Countess of Upper Ossory


Anne FitzPatrick, Countess of Upper Ossory 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.

Life

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. He kept her at his town house and took her to the opera. This flouting 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, John FitzPatrick, 2nd 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, daughter of the Reverend Sir Richard Wrottesley, Dean of Worcester. Lady Anne married FitzPatrick in 1769.
FitzPatrick died at her house in Grosvenor Square in 1804.