After racking up numerous speeding fines, the Princess Royal was banned from driving for a month in 1990 aged 40. She was also fined £150 after pleading guilty to two speeding offences in a Stow-on-the-Wold Magistrates court in Gloucestershire, according to The Guardian. She claimed she had been “late for an engagement”.

However, this is not the first time she had been caught speeding.

She was given a written warning for speeding on the M1 in November 1972, but Thames Valley Police decided not to prosecute.

Then on January 21, 1977, the 26-year-old princess was fined £40 at Alfreton Magistrates in Derbyshire for speeding on the same road.

She had been doing 96mph in a 70mph zone.

However the 1990 fine and temporary ban was not the last time she was caught speeding either.

In 2000, she was caught doing 93mph on a 70mph dual carriageway while a police car tailed her.

The princess claimed she thought the police were escorting her.

In her postal testimony to Cheltenham Magistrates, she wrote that she had been “on her way to an official engagement at Hartpury College… she saw the police car and believe it was waiting to escort her on her journey.

“She accelerated from behind the traffic in front of her to clear part of the road so the officers could see her.

“The police car then went on to the A417 and followed her.

“The car’s blue lights flashed briefly, and she believed that was a signal acknowledging they were escorting her.”

Had she been under escort, Anne would have been exempt from speeding offences but a spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace said “the princess accepts that she is subject to the normal rule of law and she will be paying her fine accordingly”.

She was fined £400 with £30 and given five points on her license after she pleaded guilty by post.

Chairman of the court, Graham Sacker, said the size of the fine reflected that Anne was “a person of high means”.

In 2002 documentary ‘The Real Princess Anne’, her speeding was attributed to her “free spirit”.

The narrator said: “Sometimes her free spirit led her into trouble.

“She got her first speeding fine when she was 20 and went on to get four more.

“She was even banned from driving for a month.

“Doing as she’s told has never come particularly naturally to her.”

Anne got in trouble with the law in 2002 as well, and actually became the first senior royal to be convicted of a criminal offence – but it had nothing to do with driving.

Anne’s dog attacked two children in a park, leading her to plead guilty to a charge under the Dangerous Dog Act.

She was fined £500 and ordered to pay £500 compensation to the victims, as well as £148 in court costs.

The court ordered the princess to keep her English bull terrier Dotty on a lead in public, and to organise for her to be trained.

Princess Anne’s daughter, Zara, overturned her Land Rover in December 2000 when she was 19.

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