Francis Annesley, 1st Viscount Valentia, was an English statesman during the colonisation of Ireland in the seventeenth century. He was a Member of Parliament for both the English and Irish houses, was elevated to the Irish peerage as Baron Mountnorris, and later gain the additional title Viscount Valentia. He is best remembered for his clash with the Lord Lieutenant, Thomas Wentworth, who in order to render Annesley powerless had him sentenced to death on a spurious charge of mutiny, although it was clearly understood that the sentence would not be carried out.

Viscount Valentia is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It has been created twice. The first creation came in 1621 for Henry Power. A year later, his kinsman Sir Francis Annesley, 1st Baronet, was given a "reversionary grant" of the viscountcy, which stated that on Power's death Annesley would be created Viscount Valentia. Annesley, a member of an influential Anglo-Irish family which descended from Newport Pagnell in the County of Buckinghamshire, was a favourite of James I, who granted him land in Ireland, notably the fort of Mountnorris in County Armagh. He was knighted in 1616, created a baronet, of Newport Pagnell in the County of Buckingham, in the Baronetage of Ireland in 1620 and Baron Mountnorris, of Mountnorris in the County of Armagh, in 1628.