Ortensia Mancini (1646 - 1699)

Born 6 Jun 1646 in Roma, Lazio, Stato della Chiesa

Ancestors

Died 9 Nov 1699 at age 53 in Chelsea, Middlesex, England

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Biography

Oretensia Mancini, daughter of Lorenzo Mancini and his wife, Geronima Mazzarini, was born in Rome on 6 June 1646. After her father's death in 1650 her mother took the children to Paris, hoping that her brother, Cardinal Mazarin, would help the children. In 1659 Ortensia received a proposal from Charles Stuart the exiled son of the executed King, Charles I of England, which was rejected. The following year Charles returned to England to be crowned King.

On 1 March 1661 she was married to Armand-Charles de La Porte de La Meilleraye, son of Charles de La Porte, duc de la Meilleraye, a cousin of Cardinal Richelieu. Ortensia bore her husband four children before, with the help of her brother, Phillipe, Duc de Nevers, she left him on 13 June 1668. She was 22 years old. She fled to Rome and her sister, Marie, Princess Colonna. Louis XIV granted her a pension and Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy, declared himself her protector, allowing her to establish herself at Chambéry. Charles Emmanuel died on 12 June 1675 and his widow, Marie Jeanne Baptiste of Savoy-Nemours, ordered Ortensia to leave Savoy.

It was at this juncture that Ralph Montagu, the English Ambassador to France persuaded her to pay a visit to, Mary of Modena, wife of James Duke of York, brother of Charles II. (Wikipedia calls Mary of Modena Ortensia's niece but she was her cousin's daughter). In England she quickly established herself in the King's affections, supplanting Louise de Kerouaille but he soon tired of her promiscuity though they remained friends.

Ortensia remained in England into the reign of William and Mary, dying in Chelsea on 9 November 1699. Her husband claimed her body which was eventually interred in the tomb of her uncle, Cardinal Mazzarin.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Hortense Mancini