Robert FitzRoy
Robert FitzRoy was born at Ampton Hall, Ampton, Suffolk, England, into the upper echelons of the British aristocracy and a tradition of public service. Through his father, General Lord Charles FitzRoy, Robert was a fourth great-grandson of Charles II of England; his paternal grandfather was Augustus Henry FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton. His mother, Lady Frances Stewart, was the daughter of the first Marquess of Londonderry and the half-sister of Viscount Castlereagh, who became Foreign Secretary. From the age of four, Robert FitzRoy lived with his family at Wakefield Lodge, their Palladian mansion in Northamptonshire.
Mary FitzRoy, Duchess of Richmond and Somerset
Mary FitzRoy (formerly Lady Mary Howard) was the second daughter of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk: a member of the ambitious Howard Family. At the time of her birth, her father was the second-most senior noble in the English peerage; her maternal grandfather Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, the most senior. After Buckingham's execution in 1521, her father was one of only two dukes in the Kingdom, (the other being Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk). This changed in 1525, when Henry VIII elevated Henry FitzRoy, his six-year-old illegitimate son by Elizabeth Blount, to the Dukedom of Richmond and Somerset. When in 1529 Thomas Wolsey, who was charged with FitzRoy's care, fell from grace the mantle passed to Thomas Howard. At the same time the idea arose, allegedly from either the King or Anne Boleyn, that FitzRoy should marry Howard's daughter. Four years later, in November 1533, negotiations were completed and Howard, now aged fourteen or fifteen, and FitzRoy, himself just fifteen, were married. Through her father, she was first cousin to both Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, as well as second cousin to Jane Seymour.