Anne Bourchier, 7th Baroness Bourchier - Adultery

Adultery

Anne and Parr were unhappy from the very start of their marriage. After their marriage in 1527, the couple did not live with each other until twelve years later. Anne was described as having been poorly-educated; and she appeared to prefer the peace of the countryside to the excitement of Henry VIII's court, as her first recorded appearance at court where she attended a banquet was on 22 November 1539 when she was aged 22.

In 1541, a scandal erupted when Anne eloped with her lover, John Lyngfield, the prior of St. James's Church, in Tanbridge, Surrey, and by whom she had an illegitimate child. He was also known as John Hunt or Huntley. The birth of Anne's child prompted Baron Parr to take action against her to protect his own interests, lest the baby should later in the future lay claim to his estates. In January 1543, he applied to Parliament, asking for a separation from Anne on the grounds of her adultery. From the Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of Henry VIII, dated 22 January 1543, there is the following item:

"Whereas lady Anne, wife of Sir Wm Parre lord Parre continued in adultery notwithstanding admonition, and, finally, two years past, left his company and has since had a child begotten in adultery and that the said child and all future children she may have shall be held bastards."

In 1541, after Anne had left Baron Parr, he began an affair with Dorothy Bray, who served as a Maid of Honour to Queen Catherine Howard.

Parr's sister, Catherine Parr, in March of 1543 used her influence to help her brother and on 17 April 1543, he obtained an Act of Parliament, repudiating Anne and her child, who was declared a bastard, and unfit to inherit. The act was styled in the Lords' journal as a Bill "to bar and make base and bastards, the child which be, or shall be borne in adultery by the Lady Anne, wife of the Lord Parr". This act was read for the first time on 13 March 1543. The Act stated in the 34th Year Hen. VIII:

"That for the last two years she had eloped from her husband, William Lord Parr, and had not in that time ever returned to nor had any carnal intercourse with him, but had been gotten with child by one of her adulterors and been delivered of such child, which child 'being as is notoriously known, begotten in adultery, and born during the espousals' between her and Lord Parr 'by the law of this realm is inheritable and may pretend to inherit all &c;' and the Act therefore declared the said child to be a bastard.

At this time, his sister Catherine was being courted by King Henry VIII. Anne spent the next few years living in exile at the manor of Little Wakering, in Essex. She was allegedly reduced to a state of poverty.

In that same year, 1543, William Parr had begun his courtship of Elizabeth Brooke, who was the niece of his mistress, Dorothy Bray, as well as a former Maid of Honour of Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard. He was created 1st Earl of Essex on 23 December 1543. On 31 March 1552, a bill was passed in Parliament which declared the marriage between Parr and Bourchier to be null and void.