Anne Clifford, born in 1590, was the only daughter of George, Earl of Cumberland, and of his good wife, Margaret Russel. She and her two noble sisters, Elizabeth, Countess of Bath, and Anne, Countess of Warwick, were distinguished for family affection, and all other womanly virtues. The Countess of Warwick was Elizabeth’s favourite Lady-in-Waiting. Anne was much with this aunt in her youth, was a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, and was destined for her court. Her father refused to allow her, like other noble ladies of her time, to learn ancient and modern languages, so she made the most of the opportunities to be found in her own. “Her instructor in her younger years was the learned Mr. Daniel, the Historiographer and Poet. She was much interested in searching out old documents about her ancestors and very jealous of preserving her rights.” (See in Nicholson and Burn’s “History of Cumberland and Westmoreland, the Autobiography of Mr. Sedgwick, who was her Secretary.”) She was well prepared by her beloved mother and respected tutor for the exigencies of her future life. The Queen died in 1602-3, and her father in 1605. A woman being considered of age at 14, she chose her mother as her guardian, who initiated the proceedings against her brother-in-law, the new Earl of Cumberland, which lasted until his death. The Earldom of Cumberland had been entailed in Heirs Male, but the secondary Titles, the Baronies of Clifford, Westmoreland, and Vescy, with all the Lands and Castles in Westmoreland belonging to them, were entailed in the Heir General. Her uncle, however, took possession, and favoured by the King, the power of wealth, and Sex Bias among those in power, he was able to hold them against her, in spite of her private and public petitions. His son, Henry, was summoned to Parliament by the title of Lord Clifford, a right which should have been hers, as she bitterly complained. Meanwhile, in 1609, she married Richard, Earl of Dorset. “On 25th July, 1610, my cousin, Henry, married Lady Francis Cecil, daughter to Robert, Earl Salisbury, which marriage was purposely made that by that power and greatness of his the lands of mine inheritance might be worsted and kept by strong hand from me” (Harl. MS., 6177, Anne Clifford’s Diary). 16th July, 1615, “the great trial for my lands in Craven.” Her husband agreed with the Earl of Cumberland to leave it to the King’s arbitration, which she would never agree to, standing upon her rights. In 1617 she was brought before King James in Whitehall to give her consent to the arbitration, “which I utterly refused, and was thereby afterwards brought to many and great troubles.” Her uncle offered £20,000 as a compromise for the Westmoreland estates, which she would not hear of, but which her prodigal husband urged her to accept. Indeed, he attempted to strain his marital rights, and backed by the King, signed the agreement with her uncle, which she refused to acknowledge, and defeated the plans of the trio by her firmness. For she was a true descendant of the old stock of women, and wished “to live and die with the feeling that she is receiving what she must hand down to her children neither tarnished nor depreciated, what future daughters-in-law may receive, and so pass on to her grand children” (Tac. Germ. c. 19). She was determined to hold by her rightful inheritance. Her husband died on 28th March, 1624, and the contest went on with renewed vigour.
In the Domestic Series “State Papers,” vol. cxxvi. 7, 1628, there is preserved “Reasons to prove that by the Common Law dignities conferred by Writ of Summons to Parliament descend to females, where there is a sole heir, and not co-heirs; being the reasons alleged for Mary, Lady Fane, in her suit for the Barony of Abergavenny in 1587, with other reasons alleged to show that such dignities by custom and reason descend to heirs female, produced on behalf of Anne claiming to be Lady Clifford.”
Also in same series, April, 1628, there is “The Petition of Anne, Countess Dowager, late wife of Richard, Earl of Dorset, deceased, and daughter and sole heir of George, Earl of Cumberland, Lord Clifford, Westmoreland and Vescy, to the King. On the death of her father, the titles of Clifford, Westmoreland and Vescy descended to the petitioner, yet Francis, Earl of Cumberland, has published that the name of Lord Clifford and that of Lord Vescy pertain to him; and Henry Clifford, Chivaler, was summoned to this present Parliament, and styles himself Lord Clifford ... prays the King to admit her claim to the dignities of Clifford, Westmoreland and Vescy, and to order the Earl of Cumberland and Henry, his son, to forbear to style themselves by these names.”
In 1630 she married Philip, Earl of Montgomery, who shortly afterwards became the Earl of Pembroke by the death of his brother, and she again claimed her inheritance, still, however, in vain. In 1641 died her uncle, leaving one son, Henry, and one daughter, Elizabeth, married to the Earl of Cork. Two years later her cousin Henry died without heir male, and without further dispute, Anne stepped into her inheritance, thereby proving her original right. She had not sold it! “1644. So by the death of this cousin German of mine, Henry Clifford Earl of Cumberland, without heirs male, ye lands of mine inheritance in Craven and Westmoreland reverted unto me without question or controversie after yt his father Francis Earl of Cumberland and this Earl Henry his son had unjustly detained from me the antient lands in Craven from ye death of my father and ye lands in Westmoreland from ye death of my mother until this time, yet had I little or no profit from ye estate for some years after by reason of ye civil wars.” On the death of her second husband in 1649, she retired to the north, and began to fortify her castles. The parliamentary forces demolished them, but she said that as often as Cromwell pulled them down she would build them up again. After a time, admiring her spirit, the Protector gave orders she should not be molested. She was not even yet free from litigation, as at first she had troubles with her tenants. In every case, however, through knowledge, experience, and firmness she finally triumphed. A cloth-worker having bought a property held under her by the yearly rent of one hen, he refused to acknowledge her as his Seigneuress by paying that small rent. But she sued him successfully, and though she spent £200, she secured that hen, and the right of which it was the symbol.
She asserted all the privileges connected with her inheritance. In her Diary she says, “As the King came out of Scotland, when he lay at Yorke, there was a striffe between my father and my Lord Burleighe who was then President who should carie the sword; but it was adjudged on my father’s side, because it was his office by inheritance, and so is lineally descended upon me.” She became High Sheriff of Westmoreland also by right of her inheritance, and exercised its duties in person for a time. “The 29th December, 1651, did I sign and seal a patent to Mr. Thomas Gabetis to be my Deputy Sheriff of ye County of Westmoreland.”
Looking back on her life in the quiet of her northern home she said, “I must confess, with inexpressible thankfulness that I was born a happy creature in mind, body, and fortune, and that those two Lords of mine to whom I was afterwards by the Divine providence married, were in their several kinds worthy noblemen as any were in this Kingdom. Yet was it my misfortune to have contradictions and crosses with them both, with my first Lord about the desire he had to make me sell my rights in ye lands of mine inheritance for money, which I never did nor never would consent unto, insomuch as this matter was the cause of a long contention betwixt us, as also for his profuseness in consuming his estate.” Her dispute with her second husband arose because she would not compel her daughter by her first husband, against the girl’s desire, to marry his son by his first wife. The consequence of these two disputes, in both of which she was in the right, was that “the marble halls of Knoll and the gilded towers of Wilton, were often to me the Bowers of secret anguish.” She was not what has been called a man’s woman, but she was essentially a woman’s woman. All good women were her friends, her cousin the Countess of Cork, daughter of her usurping uncle; her sister-in-law the Countess of Dorset, wife of her brother-in-law, whom she considered her greatest enemy. Though King James was against her, Queen Anne was her warm friend. She had no children by her second husband; and her two sons by Earl Dorset died young. She had great consolation in the affection first of her mother, then of her two daughters, and also of her grandchildren. It was in connection with one of these that an important incident occurred, necessary to be fully explained here.
I have been allowed to utilise some critical points communicated by me to the Athenæum, No. 3475, p. 709, June 2, 1894.
In an article on “Letter-writing,” published in The World, April 5th, 1753, Sir Horace Walpole quotes the famous and often repeated letter by Anne Clifford, Dowager-Countess of Pembroke, to the Secretary of State, who wanted her to nominate his follower for Appleby:—
“I have been neglected by a Court, I have been bullied by a usurper, but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man sha’n’t stand.
“Anne Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery.”